World-class review of ballet and dance.
“Layla and Majnun” is the biggest love story you’ve never heard of. Once dubbed “the Romeo and Juliet of the East,” the ancient Persian tale has a rich, winding history, with regional versions sprouting across Pakistan, Turkey, India and more throughout the centuries. Its titular characters are star-crossed lovers whose passion abounds even as fate and their families conspire to keep them apart.
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American Ballet Theatre’s fall season brought back Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room”—an exhilarating cornucopia of energy, movement and sound, rightly regarded as one of Tharp’s greatest hits. It was a thrill to see this piece entering the company’s repertory after more than a decade-long hiatus. The dance, which Tharp created for her own company—Twyla Tharp Dance—in 1986, with its over-the-top trappings, may look a bit worn and quaint after all these years. But as the spirited performance of this Tharpian classic revealed—the piece still has a “wow effect” on the viewers; it still delivers a full-bodied invigorating punch and...
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Think Medusa and you think snake-haired monster. But there’s a human side to the myth of the petrifying Gorgon: her rape at the hands of Poseidon, a detail that’s routinely forgotten, even though it’s this act of violence that prompts Athena to curse Medusa into beasthood in the first place. Acting out of jealousy, Ovid recounts, Athena “transformed Medusa’s beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn onlookers to stone.”
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Under the commanding, yet nuanced conducting of Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, currently celebrating its 100th birthday in grand style—including commissioning dozens of new works and offering numerous city-wide events—sounded splendid in Prokofiev’s “Romeo & Juliet.” Composed in 1935, the 130-minute score is one of ballet’s iconic pieces of music (played for the first time in its entirety by the Phil), with Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers continuing to live—and die—on stage, television and the silver screen. (Steven Spielberg will be remaking the 1961 film with the famed Bernstein score, though one has to wonder why.)
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It could be a wry joke about these politically fraught times of Brexit. Dancer Joel Brown, flexing and exercising on the floor, grins, remarking that it's wonderful to have an Estonian dancer (Eve Mutso) and an American (himself) performing together in Scotland. Yet, it's absolutely true, and a wonderful example of the unifying nature of choreography. Multiculturalism itself almost seems like an act of resistance these days.
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Let’s make one thing clear upfront: To see a LINES Ballet performance is to partake in wonders beyond measure, to have one’s senses reawakened by the dignity of humanity’s vulnerability, and this is as true now as it has been over many high points of the San Francisco company’s 35 year history. To watch Shuaib Elhassan pause in a pirouette, open-chested and generously alive, in startling harmony with the forces of physics, is life-affirming. To fill your eyes with this miracle while, playing live at the back of the stage, the Kronos Quartet’s richness fills your ears—this is rapture. So...
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As a dancemaker, William Forsythe is often described in brassy terms: a neoclassical powerhouse, a rule-breaker who deconstructs classical ballet and flips it on its head. He’s known for his ultra-modern choreography and penchant for friskiness, both of which fuel his latest work, though not in the in-your-face way you might think. “A Quiet Evening of Dance” explores the calm side of mighty, the dynamism that comes with confident, composed choreography and performance.
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At 74, Germaine Acogny, the Paris-based, Sénégalese matriarch of contemporary African dance, still has the power to astonish, making the solo, “Mon Élue Noire” (My Black Chosen One): Sacre #2,” choreographed for her by Ballet du Nord director, Olivier Dubois in 2015 and set to Stravinsky’s musical shocker, “Le sacre du printemps,” equally electrifying—and surprisingly relevant. From the score’s hauntingly familiar solo bassoon opening to the closing chord, which Stravinsky himself disparagingly referred to as “a noise,” this dance, first choreographed by Nijinsky in 1913 for the Ballets Russes and tackled by scads of terpsichores since, jolts with a singularity...
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As soft as a white rabbit’s fur: Edwin Landseer’s Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Titania and Bottom (1848–51). In a down of fur, the painting hanging in the National Gallery of Victoria depicts Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, besotted with Bottom, who has recently been reshaped into an ass, from William Shakespeare’s comedy of misplacement. A fairy queen and an ass, two of opposite realms entwined and for all to see in the fairy dell, accompanied by the requisite fairy folk and white rabbits. In an engraving of Titania and Bottom by Henry Fuseli they too, are encircled by...
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This Scottish debut, fusing documentary with performance, is at once a celebration of feminine power, and deconstruction of the “model” ballets performed around the time of China's Cultural Revolution. Beijing-based choreographer Wen Hui, formed Living Dance Studio with filmmaker Wu Wenguang in 1994, becoming China's first independent dance theatre company. And this witty and inventive study of both the implications of the Communist regime, and what is expected of female dancers, is also incredibly powerful in its own subtle and understated way—never didactic for its own sake.
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After attending the premiere of George Balanchine’s “Jewels,” on April 13, 1967, dance critic Clive Barnes described it in the New York Times as “too beautiful for words,” musing on the fact that at the time of its premiere the ballet had no title: “I can only presume that Mr. Balanchine must have taken one look at the extraordinary thing he created and at once found himself at a loss for words.”
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“Broken necks, splattered patellas, severed arteries: These are the things from which dreams are made of,” according to former professional wrestler, Road Warrior Hawk (ring name of Michael Hegstrand, 1957–2003). Said fellow former professional wrestler Cactus Jack (ring name of Mick Foley, 1965–), “if the Gods could build me a ladder to the heavens, I'd climb up the ladder and drop a big elbow on the world.” They might have been talking about old school wrestling, but on Tuesday night, their words could easily be re-moulded around the hulking form of Lucas Jervies’ world premiere of “Spartacus” created on the...
Continue ReadingWatching 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,...
Continue ReadingThe choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
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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.
Continue ReadingAfter 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.
Continue ReadingAn “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
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