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REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

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.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

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.

INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

The Way Forward

It was my first visit to the Dance Commons, home of ODC/Dance nestled in San Francisco’s Mission District. Brenda Way, artistic director of ODC, looking summery on this Friday morning despite a bandaged ankle (nothing serious, routine dancer injury), met me in the foyer and took me on a tour.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

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.)

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

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.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

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…”

INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Let There be Light

“I am the daughter of two immigrant parents from Venezuela and I was born in the United States. I happen to be very fair, blonde, blue eyes but I just got all the recessive genes in the family, basically,” Sasha De Sola beams.

INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

In the Music: Julia Rowe

“I grew up in a rural area of South Central Pennsylvania. The arts aren’t a big thing there but my parents are actually both in the arts. My father plays the oboe in the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania.” For Julia Rowe, soloist with San Francisco Ballet, it's all about the music.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

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.

REVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

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.”

INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Lines in the Sand: Sarah Hay

Sarah Hay, dancer-turned-actor and star of Starz channel 2015 TV drama, “Flesh and Bone,” recently moved to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career. We took a walk with her on the beach as she talked us through her transition from stage to studio. Photographs by Karolina Kuras, dresses by Louiza Babouryan.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

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...

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.