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Spirit

“Your body is a repository of memory,” says the voiceover in Retrace-Retract, Gregory Maqoma's film which is part of the Dancing In The Streets series for the Edinburgh International Festival, focusing on the issue of home. ”I am your compass. . . The spirit will guide you.” Threaded throughout this beautiful, inspiring film, directed and choreographed by Maqoma, is the poetry of Jefferson Tshabalala, which interrogates issues around poverty, inequality and strategies for survival; but also of selfhood and spirituality. These particular streets—Soweto's bustling streets in South Africa—are the backdrop. They signify the return to the source, the retracing of...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Chandelier

In real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. And so it’s been with Los Angeles-based site-specific goddess, Heidi Duckler, who founded her eponymous troupe in 1985. The intrepid choreographer has staged more than 200 works in places as far flung as Australia, Russia and Hong Kong and in such disparate—and iconic—L.A. locations as an abandoned jail (“C’opera,” from 2006, which took place at the Police Academy), “Governing Bodies” (2010), set at City Hall and, more recently, “Hildegard Herself,” a gorgeous 2019 work inspired by 12th-century abbess, composer and mystic Hildegard von Bingen, performed at the 1925 Gothic Revival-style St....

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Testimonials

I am scratched, punched, kicked and bruised watching Mele Broomes in her extraordinary film Wrapped Up In This. I am compelled by the multitudes within the stories, I feel consumed by its power. I'm disgusted by the real life accounts of racism endured by the womxn Broomes interviewed whilst researching this piece, whose voices are heard as it develops. Yet, it is not without hope, it grows and amplifies. It is utterly visceral and political. It feels radical, revolutionary in its intent. It is discourse, dance, and demonstration all wrapped up at once.

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Cue Landscape

As I walked in the blazing early evening sun to the subway this past Monday evening, I wondered how the performers of Andrea Miller’s “You Are Here” would fare in such heat. As if to immediately put my mind to rest, the show began with instant catharsis as the dancers plunged into the large rectangular pool upon entering Lincoln Center’s Hearst Plaza. In unison, they stomped and hopped their way through the water, clasping their own hands together, arms slashing to a driving beat. The steps had a folk dance feel, and their motions felt intentional, grounded, almost sacred. A...

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Tahoe Dance Camp

A recent Dance Data Project survey reports what everyone in the ballet world knows: Women are grossly under-represented in ballet leadership. Just one of the top 10 largest ballet companies in the U.S. is led by a woman, and only 30 percent of the top 50 companies are. Retiring ballerinas, we know, are far more likely to become ballet mistresses and school faculty than artistic directors.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Dances at Dusk

To say that it was a joy to see live dance again after some 16 months is an understatement. And seeing San Francisco-based Alonzo King LINES Ballet in the final offering of the Music Center’s al fresco “Dance at Dusk” series, proved to be the cherry on the quasi-post-pandemic cake. Although we are not out of the Covid woods yet—Los Angeles has reinstated its indoor mask mandate and the Delta variant is on the rise—being socially distanced in pods of four on the Jerry Moss Plaza, made for a perfect blend of art, community and, well, safety.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Humans Remain

In 1975, Laura Mulvey first came up with the term “the male gaze,” where the assumption, particularly within the media, was that those consuming and watching most art forms were male, or male identifying, hence the need for women being represented as mere window dressing and sexually appealing objects. This was largely ubiquitous in film, art, pop videos and on fashion runways—even in dance productions. However, with strides being made in contemporary society in recognising that gender is largely a construct, and that it's no longer about male and female, but rather than gender can also be trans, fluid and/or...

REVIEWS | By Valentina Bonelli

A Dance of Seduction

The long-awaited “Don Juan” by Johan Inger for Aterballetto has at last found its way on a national and international tour. Due to the first Italian lockdown, the creation of the new ballet was suspended and postponed and when it finally premiered, last autumn, it had only two performances: a preview in Reggio Emilia, the city where Aterballetto is resident, and an official debut in Ferrara. An important stop in this year's new tour was in Ravenna, at the renowned festival founded by Riccardo Muti’s wife. Performed indoor at Alighieri Theatre, a beautiful “teatro all’italiana,” “Don Juan” had two performances,...

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Animals & Angels

“Animals & Angels,” the new pas de deux by #QueertheBallet founder Adriana Pierce, is so pretty and easygoing you almost forget how radical it is. The piece is under five minutes long and features two women, Cortney Taylor Key and Audrey Malek, wafting joyfully around an airy white loft. They beam affectionately at each other as Joy Oladokun sings the opening line of her song, “Animals & Angels:” “Would you like some coffee with a side of cream?” Suitably, Key has a on a cream-colored shirt with latte brown high-waisted pants, Malek sports the inverse. It’s all so pleasant and...

REVIEWS | By Claudia Lawson

Bangarra's SandSong

Astoundingly impactful, Bangarra’s “SandSong: Stories from the Great Sandy Desert” is a work that needs to be seen by all Australians.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Prelude to Anarchy

There is no genuflecting here. Joan Clevillé's new film for Scottish Dance Theatre, The Life and Times, is as close to the classic lush period cinema of Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman, with all of the integral anarchy, mischief and darkness as it's possible to create, without getting too controversial or explicit (neither director was a stranger to controversy, or well-crafted filth).

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

In the In-between

The “Five Minute Call” proceeds a bit differently for this final offering in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s unprecedented digital season. In the pre-curtain video montage created by principal dancer Dylan Wald, we see the dancers pulling off false eyelashes and packing up—including sealing an era-defining face mask back inside a Tupperware container—then walking out of the dressing room to their post-performance lives. Except suddenly the footage runs in reverse. The eyelashes and costumes go back on, the dancers are back on the stage. Here we are in the heightened “already-but-not-yet” experience of our moment: We feel we are already past the...

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

Teenage Angst and Institutions

Watching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

The Me of Today

The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

America, F**K Yeah

After a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.

REVIEWS | Emily May

Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup

An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.