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Dark Night
REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Dark Night

It is the smell of composted ingredients I notice first as I make my way along the passage. A blend of animal manure, rainforest mulch, leaf mould, washed river sand, and loam, giving off that warm garden smell. A mound of steamy soil, piled high in the Magdalen laundry[note] Magdalen laundries, Abbotsford Convent, accessed March 22, 2019 [/note] of the Abbotsford Convent; a soil mix for holding moisture in a space still damp from its history. Soil might be a source of nutrients for growth, but in the dirt and dust and sadness of the laundry, its steam is overpowering...

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Skeleton Tree
REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Distant Sky

Thirteen dances. Thirteen stages. “13 meditations on death and loss.” Stephanie Lake’s new work, “Skeleton Tree” is about death and loss, and in being about death and loss it is also about love and hope. Someone to farewell, to grieve over, an ache to feel and perhaps to heal. A recognition of presence: I existed; I ended. I live on, hopefully. I am remembered; remember me.

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New Horizons
REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

New Horizons

I caught the final showing of the New Combinations program over the closing weekend of the New York City Ballet’s winter season. It happened to fall on one of the Art Series nights, on which discounted tickets and a mid-performance demonstration draw a young, fashionable crowd. The evening had a bustling energy. But the biggest buzz of the week was the announcement of another new combination: the appointment of Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan to the helm of the company, as artistic director and associate artistic director, respectively.

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Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake
REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Hope is the Thing With Feathers

The theatre/dance show that is “Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake” is by now a global institution. There has been so much written about it over the decades, that I may need to find new language to define why it endures so much, some twenty-four years later from its Sadler's Wells premiere. There are several strands to this iconic production.

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Shaun Parker & Company
REVIEWS | By Claudia Lawson

Man Power

Dancer and choreographer Shaun Parker, hailing from Mildura, Victoria, has had a near two-decade career as a dancer with prominent Australian contemporary companies such as Meryl Tankard's Australian Dance Theatre, Force Majeure, Chunky Move and Sydney Dance Company. Now his company, Shaun Parker & Company, performs to sold-out theatres internationally. His newest work is “King,” an all-male exploration of patriarchal power, and socio-sexual and political structures. The world premiere took place in Sydney as part of the 2019 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival.

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ink
REVIEWS | By Theresa Ruth Howard

And still I rise

Recently at the Joyce Theater in New York, Camille A. Brown and Dancers presented “ink,” the final installation in her trilogy of concert works: “Mr. TOL E. RAncE” (2012) explored minstrelsy past and present and the mask that black people wear merely to survive in the world; “Black Girl: Linguistic Play” (2015), featuring an all female cast, took us behind the mask and revealed the beautiful complexity of black female youth and joy. It could be said that “ink” is the period on the sentence, or more apropos, a ribbon that ties all three in a bow.

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What Else is There to Say?
REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

What Else is There to Say?

The question of new work has loomed large over Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch since its eminent founder passed away in 2009. Determined to uphold the late Pina Bausch’s legacy, her troupe has spent the past decade restaging her greatest hits in an effort to pass them on to a new generation of dancers and audiences. This year marks a new course for the company, as it expands its repertoire to include material from outside artists for the first time. Norwegian playwright and choreographer Alan Lucien Øyen is one of the chosen few: his “Bon Voyage, Bob . . .” joins...

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When Angels Fall
REVIEWS | By Merli V. Guerra

When Angels Fall

Hailing from France and presented by not one but three organizations for its North American premiere, Raphaëlle Boitel’s “When Angels Fall” masterfully blends contemporary dance, theatre, and circus arts in a war against the machine—peering into a bleak future should our reliance on technology suffuse our natural ability to communicate as humans.

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Briefly Dark, Then Light and Bouncy
REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

Briefly Dark, Then Light and Bouncy

BODYTRAFFIC, the ten-year-old Los Angeles-based dance troupe, is touring nationally and made a stop at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts recently. The show featured two choreographers with Philadelphia connections. Sidra Bell, who teaches at the University of the Arts, and BalletX co-founder and Pennsylvania Ballet resident choreographer, Matthew Neenan. BODYTRAFFIC returns to Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center in April with a slightly different program that includes the Philadelphia premiere of Neenan’s “A Million Voices.”

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Yorke Dance Project turns Twenty
REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Yorke Dance Project turns Twenty

There are few project-based companies (at least in the UK and outside of the ballet world) that focus on presenting the work of past masters alongside that of emerging choreographers. Yet Yorke Dance Project, now celebrating its twentieth year, has built its reputation by doing just that. Founded by artistic director Yolande Yorke-Edgell in Los Angeles, the company has been based in London since 2009, and this year was nominated for National Dance Award for best independent company.

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