World-class review of ballet and dance.
Edinburgh is quiet. In August, the city normally swells with people jostling to get into theatres, pubs, shipping crates, beer gardens, and tents. The festivals are a key part of Edinburgh’s identity, and while there are often murmurs within the industry that a break from, or a scale back of the festivals wouldn’t do the city any harm, nobody wanted a break this way.
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The details of the tragic demise of the Romanov family, the last Imperial dynasty of Russia—and what really happened on the fateful night on July 17, 1918, in a secluded mansion, in Ekaterinburg, a town in the Ural Mountains—presented a great mystery that puzzled historians and researches for decades. The ultimate destiny of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fedorovna, was particularly clouded by enigma, speculation and intrigue. For years, there were several pretenders, riotously claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, who (as was believed by many) managed to survive the bloody...
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It begins in a place I know well. In the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria. Benedicte Bemet, who was promoted to coryphée in 2013, to soloist in 2016, to senior artist in 2018, and to principal artist in 2019 with The Australian Ballet, is seated at the far end of the hall. Beneath the prismatic revelation of Leonard French’s Great Hall ceiling (1963–67), Bemet is alone.
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With only a few words—“Lately, it has been considerably harder to rise,” Jacques Heim, founder and artistic director of the risk-intensive, hyper-physical dance troupe, Diavolo|Architecture in Motion, has managed to capture how so many of us are feeling during the unprecedented crisis perpetrated by Covid-19. These words, written by performer France Nguyen-Vincent frame Diavolo’s first foray into film, This Is Me: Letters from the Front Lines, which was commissioned by the Soraya and is available to view for free on that organization’s Facebook page.
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In the vast repertory of the Bolshoi Ballet, “Spartacus” holds a unique place. A thrilling mix of energy, athleticism and drama, this ballet is widely regarded as the famed Russian company’s most iconic work —the quintessential Bolshoi. Prominent dance critic Clive Barnes called it “the most successful Soviet ballet since ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”
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Straddling Northern California and Nevada at 6200 feet, Lake Tahoe is a natural wonder but hardly an artistic hotbed. Christin Hanna grew up as a culturally isolated “bunhead” there, on the north rim of the lake. She trained in Reno, and at American Ballet Theatre’s summer program, and made the leap to New York in her twenties, taking class at STEPS on Broadway with Willie Burmann and eventually dancing with the New Chamber Ballet at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The Pillow was revelatory to this dancer with a keen sense of history and a deep respect for the importance...
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“Let us remember, we’re fighting two viruses,” the choreographer Kyle Abraham writes on the A.I.M (Abraham in Motion) website. In what is a perfect response to both, the Joyce Theater is streaming a performance of his piece “Meditation: A Silent Prayer” online through August 24th. Though this work premiered in 2018, it seems tailor-made for the Black Lives Matter reckoning of today. Of course, the racism and bloodshed “Meditation” addresses have been around for centuries, but the piece is frighteningly apropos to the current pressure cooker moment. Running just ten minutes, “Meditation” is an ideal length for our digitally-dependent quarantine....
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The finest choreographers have not only a signature style, but walk their own creative paths—think Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Crystal Pite, Michael Clark, Botis Seva and Sharon Eyal. All are idiosyncratic visionaries with their own stylistic quirks and traits. All have raised eyebrows, and raised the roof with their work, which may not be rooted in the comfort of traditions and familiarity, but rather, leave indelible marks on the viewer. If you can make an audience member squirm, laugh, feel puzzled, or even aroused—sometimes, all at once—job done! The best artists create worlds within worlds. So it is with genius...
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Nederlands Dans Theater’s brand new work “Standby” is a dance of irresistible energy, galvanizing athleticism and touching poignancy; it’s also an ingenious and masterly realized work of art created in the time of pandemic. Choreographed in just three weeks and captured exclusively on film to be streamed on the company’s website and NDT’s YouTube channel, “Standby” is described by its creator, Paul Lightfoot, as a ballet inspired by the limitations and possibilities of social distancing. “Can we connect without touch?” With this brilliant dance, the choreographer answered this question affirmatively.
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This endlessly fascinating series Danceworks from BBC Four, produced by Sadler's Wells and directed by Andy Dunn, is a welcome peek into the creative process of four disparate companies, developing and touring new pieces. It's also an intimate window into residencies and the rehearsal spaces that are usually off-limits to audiences. The details are fascinating: a thrilled or bemused audience member's face; costumes hanging up to dry which resemble shedded skins, flying footwork tapping on dusty floors, the concentration of a choreographer as his, her or their creations burst into vivid life. Each episode is very different, but provides new...
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From the wide variety of ballet performances that have been streamed on Mariinsky.TV during the last four months, “Giselle” holds a place of its own. It’s a unique and exceptionally-made 2016 recording of the beloved 19th-century classic, produced by Telmondis, with Mariinsky Theatre, Mezzo, France Télévisions, and featuring the company’s prima, Diana Vishneva, in the title role and Étoile of Opéra National de Paris, Mathieu Ganio, in the role of Count Albrecht.
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Few choreographers made work which endures and resonates like the mighty Pina Bausch. She wasn't just an iconoclastic presence, she created work that still shocks, gets under the skin and into the marrow, and feels so visceral that it is timeless—whether it was through certain nuanced presentations of violence or societal taboos; staging work in unusual locations or bringing older and younger dancers together as twinned iterations of themselves. She stripped back veneers of genteel bourgeois respectability. She got down and dirty, she provoked, teased at larger truths about the human condition, and kept it real. Work was not always...
Continue ReadingTwo performers crawl in on hands and knees wearing neon green, hooded coveralls—the lightweight papery kind made for working in a sterile environment—and clusters of balloons pinned to their backs.
Continue ReadingWill Rawls makes boundaries visible by defying them. Known for the disciplinary and topical range of his projects, the choreographer, director, and performer approaches issues of representation in “[siccer],” a multi-part, multi-site work co-presented by L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival. A live performance at Performance Space New York...
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It is always interesting when multiple theme steps emerge over the course of a mixed repertory evening, but it is uncanny on one featuring five different ballets, each with a different choreographer and composer, covering a twenty-year span (2005-2025).
Continue ReadingZvidance premiered its new work “Dandelion” mid-November at New York Live Arts. Founded by Zvi Gotheiner in 1989, Zvidance has been a steady presence in the New York contemporary dance scene, a reliable source of compositional integrity, and a magnet for wonderful dancers.
Continue ReadingCleveland native Dianne McIntrye received a hometown hero's welcome during her curtain speech prior to her eponymous dance group thrilling the audience in her latest work, “In the Same Tongue.”
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