World-class review of ballet and dance.
There were shots fired—blanks, of course—when the New York-based Paul Taylor Dance Company, founded in 1954, opened the 20th season of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center during the last weekend of April. Indeed, in a concept program of three anti-war works, which may have looked good on paper, the program mostly misfired, none of the works more than Lauren Lovette’s world premiere, “Dreamachine.”
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As a choreographer and dancer who conceives and directs experimental performance, Dominican-born, Florida-raised Ligia Lewis is not shy about expressing her opinions, whether in an interview, on stage, or in real life. Indeed, with her most recent work, “A Plot/A Scandal,” which has its U.S. premiere in Los Angeles at the Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art, May 5-6, Lewis once again pulls no punches as she weaves together historical, anecdotal, political, and mythical narratives as only she can.
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Thinking of a ballet-world novel, there are certain things that might come to mind: an illicit relationship between a young female dancer and a (usually significantly) older male choreographer, a backstabbing betrayal between dancers who compete for said choreographer’s attention, glass in pointe shoes as revenge . . . You know the drill. All these tropes—and more—are thrown out the window in Chloe Angyal’s debut novel, Pas de Don’t.
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The final weeks of San Francisco Ballet’s ninetieth season brought a flurry of news, intrigue, and emotion. On April 20, the company announced an ambitious 2024 season, the first programmed by new artistic director Tamara Rojo. The next morning, the company dropped a bomb: executive director Danielle St.Germain had just resigned after barely a year in the job. Given that SF Ballet offered no reason for the resignation and the enthusiastic way St.Germain had positioned herself as co-leader with Rojo, speculation flew as to whether St.Germain had feuded with the board or Rojo or both. As I write this, news...
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At the high point of Hope Mohr’s new hour-long “Horizon Stanzas,” the three dancers announce, in a zombie monotone, “I knew what to do now.” They crawl to the wall to scribble makeup on their faces. Then Suzette Sagisi buries her head in The Joy of Cooking and sobs about mayonnaise, Belinda He maniacally scrubs herself with a kitchen brush, and Tegan Schwab-Alavi stuffs potatoes and squash into her bra. (The vegetables keep tumbling out, making for classic slapstick.)
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Some programs at New York City Ballet feel like a well-balanced meal; others, like a hodgepodge. The “Masters at Work: Balanchine & Robbins 2” program, which I caught last week, fell into the latter category, as if the company had put together a program from bits and pieces left over from other programs.
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There are moments during boxing matches when the two combatants lean into each other, their bodies interlocking in an embrace. They linger there until the referee intercedes, pulling them apart. At those moments you realize that they are as close to each other as two humans can possibly be, vulnerable, exhausted, in pain, set apart from the audience by their herculean strength and effort. At that moment, nothing else really exists for them outside of that embrace. The audience is irrelevant.
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Nothing becomes a legend like getting two National Medal of Arts awards from two different presidents. As Philadanco! founder, Joan Myers Brown received one from Barack Obama for her powerful effect on American dance over the past six decades. And in March, she received another from President Joseph R. Biden as a co-founder of the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD.) Early members such as Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Dayton Contemporary Dance and Lula Washington Dance Theatrewere on board when they launched in 1988.
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We enter off the commercial retail strip of Broadway into a whimsical garden of cardboard cut-outs painted in shades of neon pink, orange, and green by the artist Mimi Gross. The gleaming wood floor of the fully functional dance studio is now bordered with flowering hedges, mirrored wall draped in leafy boughs, the glass itself painted as an enchanted forest. It all seems to quiver under the glow-in-the-dark lighting design of Lauren Parrish. As if a salve for a troubled and contentious world, Douglas Dunn has turned his SoHo loft into a lush “Garden Party,” filled with poetry and music...
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The first time I slid on my well-worn Grishko canvas ballet slippers and placed my left hand on the barre after two years away, it felt like a homecoming. There were many other things I expected to feel during that first class: trepidation, perhaps even some embarrassment. But that day I only felt pride—at the fact that my body was still capable of many of the movements I’d spent years perfecting—and joy—at the fact that I was finally practicing them again.
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Why program George Balanchine’s 1968 ballet “La Source” with Alexei Ratmansky’s 2010 “Namouna, A Grand Divertissement,” as New York City Ballet has done this season? The thing that binds the two ballets together is a similar spirit, born of their common origin: the Paris Opéra. Both are set to lustrous music composed by 19th century French composers (Léo Delibes and Édouard Lalo) for grandiose ballets filled with adventure and set in magical locales. Both Balanchine and Ratmansky have dispensed with their original plots, to differing degrees—Ratmansky keeps the whiff of a story and the notion of characters with specific traits,...
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Northern Ballet's critically-acclaimed adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” now in its tenth year, is back on May 16th at Sadler's Wells. With superb choreography from David Nixon CBE, audiences are sure to be dazzled by their highly visual, pulse-raising production, which promises to go deep into the scandals, decadence, wild parties and heart-rending tragedies. Above all, the piece will explore the huge moral ambiguity at the heart of the classic Jazz Age drama.
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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