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REVIEWS | By Jade Larine

Arty-farty Nutcracker

Reuniting two separated siblings, opera and ballet, was Benjamin Millepied and Stéphane Lissner’s mantra. And so they did. The premiere of the extravagant double bill “Iolanta/The Nutcracker,” staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov, was a major highlight of the Paris Opera Ballet's 2015-2016 season. There wasn’t much left of the original 1892 version, though. Tcherniakov was much praised for endowing the two scattered works with a newfound unity, his “Nutcracker” responding to “Iolanta” in some ways.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Between the Lines

When asked to explain what her dance had meant, Isadora Duncan said: “if I could tell you what it meant, I wouldn’t have to dance it,” encapsulating the idea that dance, in its traditional sense, removes the need for words. The quote reminds us that the body is capable of expressing just as much as language; that physical expression, as Duncan pointed out, can capture the emotions, thoughts and images that exist around and beyond words.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Thrill of Motion

Close to the front of the stage, dancer Kym Sojourna moves with calm intensity. Her actions are a study in form and control, each extension aiming to stretch her body as if beyond the reach of her limbs. It is the opening to Wayne McGregor’s “PreSentient,” first created for Rambert 17 years ago when the company was under the direction of Christopher Bruce. Now, in this first triple bill from the company’s new artistic director, Benoit Swan Pouffer, “PreSentient” makes a return to the Rambert repertoire—and it is there to make a statement.

DANCE FILM | By Kosta Karakashyan

A Twisted Tale

Edifice Dance Theatre’s new dance film Salomé uses a hybrid ballroom and contact improvisation vocabulary to explore a wide range of human emotions. The company, in collaboration with director Rogério Silva, take Oscar Wilde’s version of the mythical Salomé, the young seductress who requests and is granted Jokanaan’s head on a silver platter, and offer a haunting dance film adaptation featuring sinuous partnering and Silva’s trademark camera work.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

More New Combinations

New York City Ballet’s spring season featured a new work by Justin Peck as well as Pam Tanowitz’s company debut. Two other recent repertory additions—Matthew Neenan’s “The Exchange” and Gianna Reisen’s “Judah”—were also revived along with company staples and a few rarities. Of the new set I enjoyed Peck’s short, springy “Bright” the most. The stellar coupling of Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen in an airy heaven-scape was fleetingly dreamy. The ballet read as a brief glimpse through the clouds into Elysian fields, and was stunningly god-lit by Brandon Stirling Baker. Mark Dancigers’s score was anthemic yet flowery—with bells and chimes...

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Shostakovich Trilogy

There’s a devastating moment that arrives about two-thirds into “Symphony #9,” the first and most powerful panel in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Shostakovich Trilogy,” danced by Mathilde Froustey and Luke Ingham during one of the final performances in San Francisco Ballet’s spring season. The ensemble rushes in with their happy little flexed-foot peasant dances, their movements—penchée splits like ironing boards, hands touching the floor—becoming unabashedly vulgar. Amid the creepily murky lighting, Ingham lifts Froustey, and her feet beat in twittering exuberance as her head, neck and arms hang dead above. The image sears: rarely has art shown us more powerful testimony to...

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Lurking Within

Max Porter’s novel Lanny begins with Dead Papa Toothwort slipping “through one grim costume after another as he rustles and trickles and cusses his way between the trees.”[note]Max Porter’s Lanny (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 2019).[/note] He is the Green Man myth of decay and renewal, of chaos growing into hope; “he pauses as an exhaust pipe, then squirms into the shape of a rabbit snare, then a pissed-on nettle into pink-strangled lamb. He plucks a blackbird from the sky and cracks open the yellow beak. He peers into the ripped face as if it were a clear pond. He...

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

A Sacred Pause

This double bill has similar thematic concerns: group dynamics; ritual, intimacy, humanity. In spite of very different approaches, there's a sense of being at one with, or up against, the elements, of nature and rebirth, and our complicated relationship with the planet. As issues around climate change have been pushed front and centre in the news, these two contrasting pieces feel very much of the zeitgeist.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

New York City Ballet's Spring

“Balanchine is my life, my destiny.” Suzanne Farrell still talks about George Balanchine in present tense. Hailed as the most influential ballerina of the 20th-century, Farrell has dedicated her career and her life to preserving and promoting the legacy of the great ballet master. In her dancing days, she was New York City Ballet’s brightest star—and one of the most important muses to Balanchine. They formed the greatest artistic partnerships between a choreographer and a dancer in the history of ballet. An epitome of the ideal Balanchine ballerina, Farrell was his perfect creative instrument and a source of inspiration for...

REVIEWS | By Rebecca Ritzel

Modern Mashup

Modern dance audiences should learn how to roar. Until then, companies must collaborate with indie rock stars if they want to take bows with fans on their feet screaming.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Experiments in Time and Space

Eleanor Sikorski, Flora Wellesley Wesley and Stephanie McMann, the charming dancers behind the London-based trio Nora, routinely invite guest choreographers to create new work on them. The approach is useful for showcasing their versatility as performers, particularly their flair for theatre, but makes it difficult to identify stylistic through-lines in their rep. Previous pieces shown at the Lilian Baylis have been hugely disparate, their moods ranging from jovial to irreverent to tranquil. With its abstract, contemplative tenor, the troupe’s newest work, “Where Home Is,” by Deborah Hay, adds another contrasting number to the mix.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

The Eve Project

Janet Eilber, the Martha Graham Company’s artistic director, appeared in the audience with a microphone to give helpful pre-show program notes during her troupe’s run at the Joyce this month. This was a good idea, not only because she is supremely elegant in voice and bearing—she should record books on tape or host an arts talk show—but also because the programs were challenging and a little hand-holding goes a long way. The current season is titled “The EVE Project” in honor of the upcoming centenary of women’s suffrage. Every program explored the power of women and, remarkably, all of the...

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

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,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

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.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

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.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

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.

REVIEWS | Emily May

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.