A Blessing and a Curse

Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Fairy’s Kiss” is a captivating piece of dance storytelling, fusing genres of fairy tale, mystery, and romance to powerful effect. Set to Igor Stravinsky’s enchanting score and replete with gripping choreographic imagery, it’s a masterfully-crafted and thought-provoking ballet in which Ratmansky’s talent of making dance as a vital, immediate, and engrossing theatrical experience shines through and through. This 45-minute-long work was created for Miami City Ballet and received its much anticipated premier at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami on February 10. This was the second ballet by the famed Russian-born choreographer for MCB, the first being...

Sweet Dreams

A kind of cross between Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and the booze-infested flick, Lost Weekend, the world premiere confection, “Whipped Cream,” landed with a sumptuous, if occasional cloying, sweetness in Orange County for a five-day run, before making its frothy way to American Ballet Theatre’s home—the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House—in May.

Star Power

Canada's All Star Ballet GalaSony Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, Ontario, February 11, 2017

Form & Content

A book, physically cut from the pages of another, is the inspiration behind Wayne McGregor’s “Tree of Codes.” Much like the Jonathan Safran Foer book with which it shares its title, McGregor’s work is an experiment in the arrangement of form and content. In collaboration with Jamie xx and artist Olafur Eliasson, who conceived the incredible stage design for “Tree of Codes,” these three artists have created a complex, multi-sensory work of dance and design that turns the act of viewing upon its head.

Grotesque Steps

Snow White outstretched in her glass coffin. A company of black-veiled figures gathered round. Before long she is dragged into life and her gory fate at the hands of her cruel stepmother is played out before the audience.

Sensing Loss

A room, its furniture haphazardly stacked. The armchair lies toppled, the door, placed flat like a table-top, is reimagined as a bed; the cupboards become miniature doorways or upstairs windows through which the company climb.

A Given Light

Death and taxes are the two inevitables in a person’s life. And while taxes are not ever danced about (danced around, perhaps), the subject of death has never been one from which dancers and choreographers have shied away. As part of its “Flower of the Season,” currently in its 14th year, Body Weather Laboratory (a forum for investigating kinesthetic and movement research that was initiated in 1978 by dancer/farmer and improvisateur, Min Tanaka), presented a new work by Oguri, the Japan-born Butoh dancer who leads BWL in Venice, and, to be blunt, never fails to astonish.

A Mixed Bill

In a concert of five works—notable for a lack of discernible style—Jessica Lang Dance roared into Los Angeles last weekend as if it were the second coming. At only six years old, this troupe has somehow catapulted itself to the front ranks of companies.

Blow Up

Waterbeds may have been a 70’s fad, but what about inflatable furniture? For a mere $74.95 (with free shipping, who knew?), Amazon offers the sofa of your dreams, one designed with a “waterproof-flocked top surface and a vinyl bottom that provides an incredibly comfortable sitting surface for any occasion.” For Lionel Popkin, a former Trisha Brown dancer and a choreographer who has mined his Hindu/Jewish roots, memorialized Ruth St. Denis and sautéed onions and curried zucchini in a range of works that satisfied, amused and, if not necessarily provoked, left indelible imagery nonetheless.

What Would Sia Do?

Performer Lucy Gaizely and her ‘tween’ fourteen year old son Raedie sit on stage, clad in flesh-coloured leotards and classic Sia blonde bob wigs. Both are huge fans of the husky voiced Australian singer-songwriter and record producer Sia Furler. Both have a rebellious streak, and a tendency (by their own admissions) to run off at the mouth. Both have soulful eyes, and mischievously twitching mouths. Both are at the juncture in their lives where they are acutely, excruciatingly, embarrassing to each other, often in public.

Humanity Restored

At the end of Batsheva Dance Company’s “Last Work,” a man sits with his back to us and his legs spread, apparently masturbating. Then he rotates to face us and we see he is cleaning a machine gun. Meanwhile, club music pounds, a frenzied crowd runs in circles, lights flash, streamers fly. Ian Robinson drags out a microphone and starts lashing it to the floor with masking tape. Then he screams.

The Sum of its Parts