Emergent Summer
Tushrik Fredericks walks as if in a trance, arms floating forward and pushing back with each step. Fog transforms the air into a tangible element.
Continue ReadingWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
In her new biography, The Swans of Harlem, journalist Karen Valby is witness to the testimony of five pioneering Black ballerinas intimate with the founding history of Dance Theatre of Harlem. She shares their stories from childhood dreams to international stages to obscurity within the larger dance world with a palpable urgency. The mission seems to be somewhat contradictory: on one hand, to give these icons their due before it is too late and, on the other, to restore them to their rightful place in dance history. At intervals she reprises the realization of one of these ballerinas, Sheila Rohan, that she didn’t need to be the star ballerina—“It was enough that I was there. I was there. I was there.”
Tushrik Fredericks walks as if in a trance, arms floating forward and pushing back with each step. Fog transforms the air into a tangible element.
Continue ReadingHouston Ballet is the fourth largest ballet company in the United States, but when it comes to the talent of its top dancers, they are the equal of any American company.
Continue ReadingThe height of summer has arrived to New York’s lush and idyllic Hudson Valley. Tonight, in addition to music credited on the official program, we are treated to a chorus of crickets and tree frogs in the open-air pavilion of PS21 Center for Contemporary Performance.
Continue ReadingEschewing a conventional film narrative, Labyrinth of the Unseen World created in collaboration by French filmmaker Amelie Ravalec and Scots/Irish dance artist Paul Michael Henry, instead fuses visual poetry with dance performance, creating a hallucinatory, disturbing, yet beautiful dreamscape.
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Thank you for this detailed, thoughtful, and thought provoking review of a complex and groundbreaking chapter of ballet history. I learned a lot. It makes me want to read The Swans of Harlem to learn much more.