This site has limited support for your browser. We recommend switching to Edge, Chrome, Safari, or Firefox.

Latest


The Food of Love
REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

The Food of Love

2016 marks the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, and the year has seen artistic tributes pour in from around the world: film festivals, art exhibitions, publishing initiatives, theatre takeovers. Birmingham Royal Ballet is responsible for one of the most extensive dance offerings: a dedicated Shakespeare Season featuring 80 performances of seven Bard-inspired ballets, including a new evening-length reworking of “The Tempest” from artistic director David Bintley.

Continue Reading
Grupo Corpo
REVIEWS | By Jonelle Seitz

Quiet Landings

Grupo Corpo, the Brazilian contemporary company, gave one performance in Austin, sandwiched by stops in Minneapolis and New Orleans, and between engagements in New York City and Europe. I can imagine that these one-nighters blur together for the members of the group, distinguishable only by hotel and theater amenities and the receptiveness of the audience. But for Austin audiences, who have had the opportunity to see the company once every few years since 2008, thanks to programming by the University of Texas, each of these rare performances is distinct. The two ballets on this program, both created for the company...

Continue Reading
Forces to Test
REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Forces to Test

Down, instead of up. That is how things fall when they are dropped. But in the worlds of circus and dance, the body doesn’t have to give the appearance of being a servant to gravity. In the worlds of circus and dance, the body can defy gravity. And gravity is what pulls three pieces by three different choreographers together in Les 7 Doigts’ “Triptyque,” presented as part of Melbourne Festival at the Playhouse late on a Sunday afternoon. A swirling galaxy is made, beginning with Marie Chouinard’s “Anne & Samuel,” and Victor Quijada’s “Variations 9.81,” before pulling up the bed covers...

Continue Reading
Lucinda Childs
REVIEWS | By Jade Larine

Postmodern Vibes

It isn’t as mainstream as the Opera Garnier’s season opening. Facing the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Théâtre de la Ville hosts a yearly festival as fall takes its toll on yellowish leaves of Haussmann boulevards. In spite of its great media coverage by contemporary dance enthusiasts and low pricing policy, Le Festival d’automne, is something of a well-kept secret. The 2016 edition is dedicated to Lucinda Childs’ postmodern vibes, featuring her famous piece, “Dance” the evening of the premiere. When first performed in 1979, “Dance” met with mixed reception. Later, it earned the status of ‘masterpiece’ and it’s rare to read...

Continue Reading
Balanchine Jewels
REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

All that Glitters

George Balanchine’s “Jewels” will turn 50 next year. It was, and still is, a ballet like no other; a perfect night at the theater and a great introduction to the art of Balanchine.

Continue Reading
The Good WIFE
REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Good WIFE

Crawling with hipsters, scenesters and lipstick lesbians, the funky warehouse in L.A.’s up-and-coming neighborhood, Frogtown, recently served as a performance space for WIFE’s apocryphal “Enter The Cave.” The hometown female trio—Jasmine Albuquerque, Kristen Leahy and Nina McNeely—had presented the first act of “Cave” at the Hammer Museum last June to what can only be called adoring throngs.

Continue Reading
Carlos Acosta
REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

The Classical Farewell

It feels as if Carlos Acosta has been saying a rather long farewell to classical ballet—his 2015 farewell performance “A Classical Selection,” marked his departure from the Royal Ballet, along with his own production of “Carmen”—but this, it seems, is Acosta’s true farewell to classical dance. While Acosta will not be retiring from dance entirely (he will continue to dance in contemporary works and pursue a role as choreographer and director), his emotional curtain call proved just how much saying ‘farewell’ to classical dance means to a man who has become an icon of the ballet world.

Continue Reading
Sophie Laplane
REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Fuzzy Logic

Tonight's little surprise, a small bonus routine, comes in the form of dancer and choreographer Jack Webb's incredible new work “Drawn to Drone,” performed by soloist Christopher Harrison and with a hypnotic soundscape by Webb himself. Using two white chairs only, Harrison enters the space, methodically strips down to underwear and sits on the lined-up chairs, tentatively stretching and contorting his limbs, which seem to move independently of his body. His arms and legs raise up in slow motion, and the focus is entirely concentrated on the geometric shapes he creates. He seems like an astronaut on a space flight...

Continue Reading
Smuin
REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Classical, Revisited

I had the fortune to sit next to two very charming and chatty longtime Smuin fans for the company’s San Francisco run of its fall triple-bill. David and Dan, let’s call them, are in my experience representative of the 16-dancer troupe’s loyal base. They relish connoisseurship of the Bay Area arts in general, and just that week also attended the San Francisco Opera and American Conservatory Theater. For more than a decade they subscribed to front-row dress circle seats at the San Francisco Ballet—“until the board ousted Michael Smuin for that boring new director”—Helgi Tomasson. Under Tomasson, they said, “suddenly...

Continue Reading
Crystal Pite Seasons Canon
REVIEWS | By Jade Larine

Enigmatic Ode to Nature

The premiere of the new ballet season celebrated the Paris corps de ballet with a triple bill dedicated to its century-long grandeur. Yet the traditional défilé—a grandiose opening—looked at odds with the following minimalist pieces. Versatility or schizophrenia? The 300-year old company still suffers from identity disorders. Tino Seghal's “Sans Titre” (untitled piece) was the most obvious warning sign of such disarray. One can only hope that erratic mixed bills will soon be gone with the wind.

Continue Reading
Balanchine Vienna
REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Hidden Drama

New York City Ballet’s spectacular bill “Balanchine x Vienna” presented during the company’s fall season at David H. Koch Theater in New York comprised three ballets: the effervescent “Divertimento #15,” the astringent and haunting “Episodes,” and the theatrically engrossing “Vienna Waltzes.” This stylistically diverse program revealed various facets of the choreographer’s genius, giving us Balanchine the classicist, the modernist and the showman. As the title suggests, the program also paid homage to Vienna, featuring music of five composers—Mozart, Webern, Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár and Richard Strauss—whose life and career had close ties to the city that for centuries has...

Continue Reading
Living Doll
REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Living Doll

On a Tuesday night, I fancied myself carved from the pages of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. I cast myself as Gwenda Reed from “Sleeping Murder.” The year was 1951, and I pinned a bakelite Bluebird of Happiness brooch to my coat lapel. I swapped The Duchess of Malfi for “Coppélia” because this was fantasy, and made for the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. And true to the liberties of daydream, 1951 rolled into both 1962, when the Australian Ballet first performed “Coppélia”during its inaugural season, and 1979, when founding artistic director Peggy van Praagh and former theatre director George Ogilvie...

Continue Reading
Good Subscription Agency