World-class review of ballet and dance.
After attending the premiere of George Balanchine’s “Jewels,” on April 13, 1967, dance critic Clive Barnes described it in the New York Times as “too beautiful for words,” musing on the fact that at the time of its premiere the ballet had no title: “I can only presume that Mr. Balanchine must have taken one look at the extraordinary thing he created and at once found himself at a loss for words.”
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“Broken necks, splattered patellas, severed arteries: These are the things from which dreams are made of,” according to former professional wrestler, Road Warrior Hawk (ring name of Michael Hegstrand, 1957–2003). Said fellow former professional wrestler Cactus Jack (ring name of Mick Foley, 1965–), “if the Gods could build me a ladder to the heavens, I'd climb up the ladder and drop a big elbow on the world.” They might have been talking about old school wrestling, but on Tuesday night, their words could easily be re-moulded around the hulking form of Lucas Jervies’ world premiere of “Spartacus” created on the...
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Two back-to-back shows in Philadelphia’s 2018 Fringe Festival had me thinking in compare and contrast mode. One, full of lusty life and joy, reached out to the audience to join in the fun and total experience, and the other devoid of anything but interior dialogues, often inaudible, blanked the audience out.
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DANCEworks, a month-long residency at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, has been attracting big-name choreographers for the past decade. It's easy to see why—where else can you create in a uniquely supportive environment, in a fully-equipped theatre, by the sea? The residency culminates with a performance of the work-in-progress, and many of these works have gone on tour across the U.S. and internationally. This year marks DANCEworks' tenth anniversary, and artistic director Dianne Vapnek has every reason to celebrate.
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The last programme Natalia Osipova commissioned at Sadler’s Wells was tenacious but shaky, the Royal Ballet superstar storming the stage with then-boyfriend Sergei Polunin and a trio of hit-and-miss contemporary numbers. This time around, the commissions are stronger and the performances steadier. The six works of “Pure Dance” mix classical variations alongside brand-new solos and duets, with choreography from established dancemakers and emerging artists alike. It’s a lot of faces to try on in one night, but Osipova moves between the disparate routines like a chameleon, demonstrating the expansive versatility of her talent and how eager she is to branch...
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Perched on the back of a chair holding a microphone, right leg extended long, the artist and songwriter Mitski Miyawaki (known mononymously as Mitski) languishes on a barely illuminated stage like a cabaret chanteuse. There’s a tension in her pose; her arms appear relaxed, but every muscle is held. This photograph from her latest tour, which she posted on her Instagram, illustrates a different sort of physicality for the artist—previous show photographs tend to capture her at a standing mic, holding her guitar.
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Up in the sky there is a giant emu. They have been there all along, in the calendar in the sky. Above our heads, a creator spirit,[note]The title of Bruce Pascoe’s book, Dark Emu, on which Bangarra Dance Theatre’s “Dark Emu” is inspired by, “refers to the shape of the ‘Dark Emu’ in the night sky which represents Baiame, one of the spirit creator figures of Aboriginal Australia. The emu is also a grain feeding bird, and a plains bird, so the reference is to the creator spirit and to Aboriginal food production”. Bruce Pascoe, in interview, “The Book,” Bangarra...
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Light and dark, day and night, youth and maturity, a flirtation and redemption, naturalistic and ethereal: “Giselle” spins a conjuror’s trick all the wilier for its very familiarity, its everlasting allurement. An autumnal village presented in Act I flips to reveal the ballet blanc of Act II: two halves of a whole. We know this, we anticipate this, we lap it up. Fermented in honey before interval, raising a flagon of mead to love, and even love’s folly, and unpinned madness, we heed the warnings spun to the villagers. The flipside to a light-hearted Peasant pas de deux is heartache...
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For a month in summer, across the country from the beating heart of dance in America, New York, the coastal town of Santa Barbara becomes the backdrop for a unique dance residency, known as DANCEworks. Over the last decade, the invitation-only residency hosted by the Lobero Theatre has been instrumental in the forging the artistic careers of some of the country's foremost contemporary choreographers, including Aszure Barton, Kate Weare, Larry Keigwin and more.
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With cash prizes totalling $36,000, the Sydney Eisteddfod Ballet Scholarship is the biggest cash prize for rising ballet stars in the southern hemisphere. Now in its 44th year, the scholarship is open to dancers aged 16-19 all of whom are teetering on the edge of securing a place in a world class ballet school, or for the lucky few, a company contract. For an art form reliant on funds to enable careers, the scholarship presents a serious opportunity.
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Of all the touring modern dance companies based New York, none has consistently introduced talented new choreographers (or new-to-me choreographers) like Ballet Hispánico.
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While the full moon was never actually visible—at least from this reviewer’s seat—during the world premiere of Stephanie Zaletel’s “moon&”—there was still an incandescent quality to the dancer/choreographer’s fifth evening-length work. Especially when Zaletel took center stage at the outdoor amphitheater, a sylvan venue nestled in Hollywood’s Cahuenga Pass, where she led her six-person, all-female szalt (dance co.), a collaborative founded in 2015, in a work that veered from meditative stillness and surrender to frenzied states of prolonged rapture and the accompanying struggles—gravitational and otherwise—of what it means to live on this earth.
Continue ReadingWatching 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,...
Continue ReadingThe 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.
Continue ReadingAfter 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.
Continue ReadingAn “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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