She Sang the Body Electric
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female. “I Sing The Body Electric” - Walt Whitman
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Reframing American Cinema
The set is a mid-century living room. A green lamp and a bookcase rest downstage right; a typewriter and an abacus lie upstage on a desk. Cushioned chairs sit invitingly among scattered suitcases which are stuffed to the brim, and a single wooden chair sits center. This is the opening shot of Kayla Farrish's “Put Away the Fire, dear, pt. 2,” a second draft to the dancer/choreographer's exploration of American film and archetypes, which was presented as part of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival in the lower east side.
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Returning Home
Frigid waterfalls. Fog rising in the grey of morning. Dense forest yielding to expansive lakes. These are some of the landscapes in Santee Smith's latest production “Homelands” for Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, which premiered at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. Smith is Kahnyen’kehàka/Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River territory in southern Canada and since 2005, she has built her company on a repertoire of innovative multimedia and contemporary dance productions that bring Indigenous experiences and Onkwehón:we worldviews to the stage.
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Verklärte Gala
Without a program, I would have confused the two premieres at the New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala. With its geometric arm motifs, calculated group patterns, and tastefully spare retro costumes, I’d have attributed “Standard Deviation” to former resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon instead of newcomer Alysa Pires. It seemed like an outgrowth of Wheeldon’s “Mercurial Manoeuvres,” from 2000. But Wheeldon’s influence could also be felt in the energetic, shifting corps patterns of Justin Peck’s “The Times Are Racing” closer too. In fact, his presence was more palpable in these than in his own piece, “From You Within Me,” a dance...
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Room for Manoeuvre
There were shots fired—blanks, of course—when the New York-based Paul Taylor Dance Company, founded in 1954, opened the 20th season of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center during the last weekend of April. Indeed, in a concept program of three anti-war works, which may have looked good on paper, the program mostly misfired, none of the works more than Lauren Lovette’s world premiere, “Dreamachine.”
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Love and Loss
The final weeks of San Francisco Ballet’s ninetieth season brought a flurry of news, intrigue, and emotion. On April 20, the company announced an ambitious 2024 season, the first programmed by new artistic director Tamara Rojo. The next morning, the company dropped a bomb: executive director Danielle St.Germain had just resigned after barely a year in the job. Given that SF Ballet offered no reason for the resignation and the enthusiastic way St.Germain had positioned herself as co-leader with Rojo, speculation flew as to whether St.Germain had feuded with the board or Rojo or both. As I write this, news...
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Beneath the Surface
At the high point of Hope Mohr’s new hour-long “Horizon Stanzas,” the three dancers announce, in a zombie monotone, “I knew what to do now.” They crawl to the wall to scribble makeup on their faces. Then Suzette Sagisi buries her head in The Joy of Cooking and sobs about mayonnaise, Belinda He maniacally scrubs herself with a kitchen brush, and Tegan Schwab-Alavi stuffs potatoes and squash into her bra. (The vegetables keep tumbling out, making for classic slapstick.)
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A Mixed Bag
Some programs at New York City Ballet feel like a well-balanced meal; others, like a hodgepodge. The “Masters at Work: Balanchine & Robbins 2” program, which I caught last week, fell into the latter category, as if the company had put together a program from bits and pieces left over from other programs.
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In the Ring
There are moments during boxing matches when the two combatants lean into each other, their bodies interlocking in an embrace. They linger there until the referee intercedes, pulling them apart. At those moments you realize that they are as close to each other as two humans can possibly be, vulnerable, exhausted, in pain, set apart from the audience by their herculean strength and effort. At that moment, nothing else really exists for them outside of that embrace. The audience is irrelevant.
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New Balance
Nothing becomes a legend like getting two National Medal of Arts awards from two different presidents. As Philadanco! founder, Joan Myers Brown received one from Barack Obama for her powerful effect on American dance over the past six decades. And in March, she received another from President Joseph R. Biden as a co-founder of the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD.) Early members such as Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Dayton Contemporary Dance and Lula Washington Dance Theatrewere on board when they launched in 1988.
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Enchanted Evening
We enter off the commercial retail strip of Broadway into a whimsical garden of cardboard cut-outs painted in shades of neon pink, orange, and green by the artist Mimi Gross. The gleaming wood floor of the fully functional dance studio is now bordered with flowering hedges, mirrored wall draped in leafy boughs, the glass itself painted as an enchanted forest. It all seems to quiver under the glow-in-the-dark lighting design of Lauren Parrish. As if a salve for a troubled and contentious world, Douglas Dunn has turned his SoHo loft into a lush “Garden Party,” filled with poetry and music...
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À la Française
Why program George Balanchine’s 1968 ballet “La Source” with Alexei Ratmansky’s 2010 “Namouna, A Grand Divertissement,” as New York City Ballet has done this season? The thing that binds the two ballets together is a similar spirit, born of their common origin: the Paris Opéra. Both are set to lustrous music composed by 19th century French composers (Léo Delibes and Édouard Lalo) for grandiose ballets filled with adventure and set in magical locales. Both Balanchine and Ratmansky have dispensed with their original plots, to differing degrees—Ratmansky keeps the whiff of a story and the notion of characters with specific traits,...
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Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
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Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
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School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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