All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 80

Latest

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

A Gilded Dream

Modern classism meets childlike wonder in Graeme Murphy’s “The Happy Prince.” Murphy is an undisputed tour de force in Australian ballet. Arguably the most successful choreographer produced by our country, he is known for many of his works including “Air and Other Invisible Forces,” “The Silver Rose,” and, most notably, his restaging of “Swan Lake.” Murphy has also had a long and prosperous relationship with the Australian Ballet, so, to see the company begin their 2020 season with “The Happy Prince” is no great shock. The ballet itself, however, is an oddball of curiosities.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

An Epic Tale

Let’s just call American Ballet Theatre’s world premiere, “Of Love and Rage,” choreographed by the singular Alexei Ratmansky, a terpsichorean orgy of outsized proportions, an all-embracing bacchanalia, if you will.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Tragedy in Black & White

Since it was first written and performed in 1596, Shakespeare’s enduring classic, “Romeo and Juliet”—the doomed romance of two teenagers from feuding families—is possibly the most famous love story ever penned. Indeed, its numerous iterations include operas, films, musicals and, of course, ballets, with indelible performances such as the 1966 Royal Ballet production starring Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, choreographed by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, racking up hundreds of thousands of YouTube views in recent years.

REVIEWS | By Josephine Minhinnett

Seeing in the Dark

I had high expectations going into the National Ballet of Canada’s mixed program on opening night. What was on the table for being the greatest highlight of the evening was Greta Hodgkinson dancing her final role before retirement in the historically star-studded “Marguerite and Armand” (originally created for Fonteyn and Nureyev by Sir Frederick Ashton). The gesture was well-considered to celebrate the ballerina’s 30-year career, but the program did not gel as I had hoped. Alongside the contemporary “Chroma” set to music from the White Stripes and a world premiere by Crystal Pite, the three pieces seemed worlds apart. In...

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Black Eyes and High Tide

BalletBoyz' twenty year anniversary is celebrated with elan with this superb double bill which showcases two world class choreographers, and the boldness and adaptability of the company. After a short cheeky film, created by Sarah Golding with all of the dancers freestyling and vying for attention, the first piece of the evening unfolds explosively, created by choreographer Maxine Doyle from Punchdrunk and featuring music from the jazz artist Cassie Kinoshi from the SEED Ensemble.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Rotunda

The final week of the New York City Ballet’s winter season showcased a world premiere: Justin Peck’s “Rotunda,” to a commissioned score by Nico Muhly. Few companies would try to pull off a new work at the close of a season that commences after six weeks of “Nutcrackers,” and immediately after a grueling two-week run of “Swan Lake.” So it wasn’t surprising that by Friday night there were some casting replacements due to injury. But NYCB always operates on the edge of what is physically possible—in terms of both stylization and scheduling.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Celebrating the Mother of Modern Dance

When you’ve seen a hundred modern (and postmodern and contemporary) dance productions, with their twisted postures and gasping contractions, it’s easy to forget where it all started. When Isadora Duncan took to the stage at the turn of the twentieth century, she dazed the establishment by rejecting the upright postures of ballet, insisting that beauty—and with it, artistic dignity—could be found in a looser, more grounded form. “Isadora Now” spotlights Duncan’s vision, celebrating her work as the Mother of Modern Dance and contemplating its impact today. That it’s been produced by a distinguished classical dancer, Viviana Durante, is proof positive...

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

The Future is Green

If there is a downside to San Francisco Ballet’s zeal for commissioning international choreographers, it is that we do not often have the luxury, here in Northern California, of considering the dancers over the dance.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Revolution & Resilience

Pollen grains can be dispersed by wind, insect, bird, or animal, and in the case of Akira Kasai’s “Pollen Revolution,” they can even be liberated within and dispersed by a dancer. Kasai’s “Pollen Revolution,” one of three performances presented within Dancehouse’s Japan Focus, alongside Ruri Mito’s “Matou” and Takao Kawaguchi’s “Good Luck,” as part of the 2020 Asia TOPA: Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts dance program, pollinates and vibrates the imagination in a way that only the “Nijinsky of Butoh” can.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Oceans of Sentiment

Alina Cojocaru’s technical fluency and stirring artistry have propelled her to starred ranks at both the Royal Ballet and English National Ballet. The Romanian luminary’s new self-assembled programme at Sadler’s Wells highlights this eloquence, taking a look at the many languages of ballet she’s perfected in her two decades on stage, from soft classical displays to exuberant contemporary tangles. Interestingly, there are no glimpses of Giselle or Aurora or the other marquee roles Cojocaru has built her name on; instead it’s mostly short pieces created on her in recent years, topped off with Frederick Ashton’s one-act “Marguerite and Armand”—a Royal...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

A Bold Arrival

Cathy Marston has arrived. Actually, the British choreographer has been doing exciting work for decades now, but the Royal Ballet has finally given her a main stage commission, which is another way of punching her members’ card. Marston’s new ballet follows in the steps of a string of ambitious narrative productions for the likes of Bern Ballett and Northern Ballet, from “Wuthering Heights” to “Jane Eyre” to “Victoria.” Her passion (and gift) for dramatising left-field subjects hits a high note here: the focus is Jacqueline du Pré, a prodigious British cellist whose talent sadly dissolved in the clutch of multiple...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Still Point

Time. One of life’s great imponderables becomes one of the topics in a soaring meditation in the T.S. Eliot literary masterpiece, Four Quartets. First published in 1943, the work, divided into four sections/poems, served as the starting point for the brilliant dance of the same name choreographed by the celebrated New York-based dancemaker Pam Tanowitz. First presented in 2018 at Bard College—a co-commission between Bard Fisher Center, Barbican London, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and CAP UCLA, where it was seen over the weekend—the work was hailed by the New York Times’ Alastair Macaulay as “dance theater of the...

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Karen Hildebrand

Spellbound

Two 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.

REVIEWS | Sarah Cecilia Bukowski

Green Light

Will 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...

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

Home and Away

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).

REVIEWS | Karen Greenspan

Of Dandelions and Resilience

Zvidance 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.

REVIEWS | Steve Sucato

The Music Within

Cleveland 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.”