The Spirit of Bennelong
I lie low. I nestle in the soil. Are you a fighter? A collaborator? A victim? A survivor? An idealist? A realist? Some days I feel like I am Bennelong. I am Bennelong.
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Coming on in Leaps and Bounds
Group dynamics are the key focus in Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's explosive “Rain,” which responds to the classic "Music for 18 Musicians" (1974-6) by American avant-garde composer Steve Reich. It is of course not the first time she has worked with Reich's music, as her company Rosas have previously performed to "Drumming," another seminal Reich piece. It's a perfect fit, as she is a deeply lyrical choreographer, fully cognisant of the nuances and textures of Reich's oeuvre: the rhythmic shifts, throbs, hums and waves; the voices which pulse like heartbeats. She really puts her dancers through their paces—it's almost as...
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Nightdance
A stagehand dressed in black makes the most of their invisibility cloak to move props into position. The great horned owl makes the most of their night vision to seek out their prey with efficiency. Swoop, snatch, gobble, gone. A human night owl stays up late, night adapted, like their namesake, their form revealed only by the screen’s cold glare as they tap at the keyboard. Wrangling deadlines, devouring novels, gambling their savings, postponing the activities of the day—who knows? Such is the endless allure of nocturnal creatures.
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Future Tense
Forward-thinking London-based urban dance collective Blue Boy Entertainment's superb show is so titled with a deliberate mis-spelling, as according to their co-Artistic Director Michael 'Mikey J' Asante: “The names are written the way they are because they could be the names of people”—a deliberate tactic to avoid racial connotations and stereotyping, from the racially diverse company.The colours are rooted in universality, tightly packed in themes of identity, war, and survival, which touch everyone. It is a thrilling call for peace and tolerance.
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Ballet Now & Then
What do a clown and a ballerina have in common? Plenty, as it turns out, if, that is, the clown is none other than the masterful Bill Irwin and the terpsichore is New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck, curator of BalletNOW, a trademarked, quasi-gala that features leading dancers from New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Miami City Ballet, the Royal Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet in three diverse, tasting-menu type programs.
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A Sweet Debut
Two new ballets created by Alexei Ratmansky were unveiled by two major ballet companies in New York this spring season: New York City Ballet premiered “Odessa” during Here/Now Festival at the David H. Koch Theater; and American Ballet Theatre presented “Whipped Cream” at the Metropolitan Opera House. (This was a New York premiere of “Whipped Cream.” The ballet was first performed by ABT in March at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California.)
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Starry Night
Celebrating the opening of its 96th season at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the baton of the esteemed Gustavo Dudamel—his eighth season as the orchestra’s music and artistic director—offered an uneven program of ballet and music, some thrilling, some head-scratching, all begging for more, however.
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Through Tatiana's Eyes
“Tatiana, dear Tatiana! / I now shed tears with you. / Into a fashionable tyrant’s hands / your fate already you’ve relinquished. / Dear, you shall perish; but before, / in dazzling hope, / you summon obscure bliss, / you learn the sensuousness of life, / you quaff the magic poisons of desire…”
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We Shall Sea
Nobody ever accused Heidi Duckler of thinking inside the box. The Los Angeles-based choreographer/director who founded her eponymous troupe 32 years ago and has been dubbed “Queen of Site-Specific Dance,” has set her works all around our sprawling megalopolis. Making use of iconic locations that include the L.A. Police Academy, City Hall and the long-gone Ambassador Hotel (the site of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination), to moving in more intimate settings such as laundromats, parking lots and bowling alleys, the gal has guts, grit and gumption to burn.
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Free Skate
Le Patin Libre (“the Free Skate”) is a group of five high-level ice skaters eschewing the sparkles, and creating something akin to contemporary dance on ice. Their double bill “Vertical Influences” was brought to Toronto as part of this year's Luminato arts festival, directed by Josephine Ridge who discovered the troupe in the south of France. “It was a pinch-me moment,” Ridge writes for Luminato, “Here is young group of surprising, exceptionally talented and entirely original artists.”
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Free Spirits Reign
“First and foremost it’s a party.” This is how Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker characterises “Rain,” created in 2001 for her troupe Rosas. As far as festivities go, it falls more on the side of relaxed rendezvous than all-night rager, but certainly a feeling of elation defines the work. Over the past 16 years, “Rain” has become a signature feature in the Rosas repertory and part of the wider pantheon of contemporary classics. Crafted not just in sync but in symbiosis with Steve Reich’s minimalist score “Music for 18 Musicians,” it swirls song and dance to form a dreamy...
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A Sense of Style
The final programme of the Royal Ballet’s Spring/Summer season sees the company perform a mixed bill of work by their founder choreographer, Frederick Ashton. Including two of his narrative works, one comic (“The Dream”) and one tragic (“Marguerite and Armand”), as well as the first piece he created for the Royal Opera House stage (“Symphonic Variations”), it’s a bill that pays homage to this admired choreographer. While there are times where the age of these works feels noticeable, the programme is, nonetheless, an enjoyable close to the season.
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Teenage Angst and Institutions
Watching 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,...
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The Me of Today
The 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.
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America, F**K Yeah
After 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.
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Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup
An “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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