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REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Booksmart

While books are being banned and burned in the States, and the political climate continues to roil, one can take solace in art. Especially the art of Butoh master and Los Angeles treasure, Japanese rice-farmer-turned-dancer Oguri, who’s been making dances in Southern California since 1990. And what dances they are: From site-specific work that has included the phenom exploring the connection between humans and the Getty Center’s architectural environment, to his ongoing series, “Flower of the Season,” in which he tackles subjects as diverse as Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, to “Caddy! Caddy! Caddy!” inspired by William Faulkner’s...

FEATURES | By Apollinaire Scherr

Paul Taylor Forever

Paul Taylor’s early dances—confined to a handful of players whom he still couldn’t afford to pay—fit comfortably on the Joyce stage this June in the troupe’s first independent outing since the pandemic. (In March, the company appeared under the auspices of the City Center Dance Festival.) “Events II” (1957), three solos from “Images and Reflections” (1958), “Fibers” (1961), and “Tracer” (1962) also fit their long-ago moment and its strict avant-garde. But what they didn’t fit was the oft-told tale of how Taylor got from obscure beginnings to popular success.

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

How It Started, How It’s Going

In the archives at Jacob’s Pillow a 1948 video of Talley Beatty performing “Mourner’s Bench,” plays on a loop. In the space of a couple minutes, Beatty moves fluidly through wave-like motions, contracting and extending his body with a coiled intensity searching for release. The black and white footage is silent and flickering, and it is difficult to make out the expression on his face. Watching it over and over, I am struck by how Beatty continues to rise up with a Phoenix-like quality, eventually lifting up so much he executes a precarious one leg balance and promenade on top...

REVIEWS | By Karen Greenspan

Down to Earth

The Vertigo Dance Company from Israel performed "One. One & One"─a work of incisive sensitivity and raw physicality at PS 21 (Performance Spaces for the 21st Century). Just a 3-hour drive north of New York City, the expansive conservancy with its singular, open-air pavilion theater is arguably the most perfect space to experience Vertigo’s earthy masterpiece. The 300-seat, open-air, state-of-the-art theater sits at the apex of a 100-acre preserve of apple orchards, meadows, and woodlands with trails. As the drama of sunset over New York’s verdant Hudson Valley played out in full view, the spectacle of Vertigo’s nine amazing dancers...

FEATURES | By Valentina Bonelli

From Verona to Venice

In very hot Italian summer, travelling between Verona and Venice could reveal the tastes and manias of “the beautiful country” in the field of dance. In Verona, stormed by tourists this year more than ever, dance has a great tradition, as this writer remembers looking back at her childhood. At the Arena di Verona, you could admire the best of the then international dance scene, such as Maurice Béjart’s Ballet du XXème Siècle or classic ballets with stars like Rudolf Nureyev and Carla Fracci, Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova, while at Teatro Romano more contemporary programs introduced companies such as...

FEATURES | REVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Bright Colours

The international dance festival Colours in Stuttgart is a fairly young endeavour. Commencing in 2015, it repeated every two years through 2019 and restarted this year with a grand program. Launched by Eric Gauthier together with Claudia Bauer and Meinrad Huber, the festival has received international acclaim since its conception. As often dance festivals do, it brings together dance professionals, amateurs and enthusiasts in a friendly environment where it’s possible to relish in a vibrant and colourful atmosphere.

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

Veiled Anonymity

Once a year, Queensland Ballet stages “Bespoke,” the company’s main contemporary program. It presents three new works created by three different choreographers that experiment with the creative process. “Bespoke” holds a unique place in Queensland Ballet’s season. It acts as a platform that exposes audiences to a wider variety of works (ones that are not just classical). More importantly, however, it also allows us to witness the wide spectrum of abilities the company dancers have to offer—abilities that are, sometimes, overlooked when staging more traditional productions.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Dancing under the Stars

For performing arts aficionados, summer in Los Angeles can mean only one thing: wining and dining under the stars at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, where a ticket can still be snagged for—yes—a buck. Currently celebrating its 100-year anniversary, the outdoor venue and summer home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with its 1927 Lloyd Wright-designed shell that has since undergone several incarnations, has been the backdrop for boldfaced names of all stripes.

FEATURES | By Sophie Bress

Through dance history, finding my own

“Confidence, Sophie. You need to work on your confidence.” That’s the voice of every dance teacher I’ve ever had, a cacophony of mental noise as I hastily pack my things for my morning contemporary class at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. I’ve never been to the Pillow before, despite reading about it every year since about age 12, when I learned what it was. Growing up dancing in Wyoming, and then moving to California to continue studying dance in college, I’ve always been on the wrong side of the country. This year, though, I’m finally in the right place at the...

REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

Summer Fling

Philadelphia’s 17-year young BalletX has gifted the city with more than 100 world premiere contemporary ballets and then taken them on the road around the nation. Known for commissioning emerging and established choreographers from many countries, it has had some great successes. Among them, Rena Butler’s breathless “The Under Way,” which Covid relegated to film, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s staggeringly original “Castrati,” Tobin Del Cuore’s marvelous “Beside Myself,” and numerous delights from its co-founder and long-time resident choreographer for the Philadelphia Ballet, Matthew Neenan. Not to mention choreographers of the stature of Nicolo Fonte, Kevin O’Day, and the inimitable Jodie Gates...

REVIEWS | By Karen Hildebrand

Dear Diary

When the inclination is to create, as the award-winning choreographer Amy Seiwert says, “the most brilliant thing that anyone’s ever seen,” what happens when you’re given permission to be less than perfect? This is one question the Michael Smuin protégée who went on to direct the Sacramento Ballet for two seasons is asking with her innovative series, Sketch. For the project’s twelfth iteration, Seiwert invited Natasha Adorlee, formerly of ODC/Dance and Robert Moses’ Kin; and rising star, Joshua L. Peugh, founder of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, to join her with a group of eight stellar dance artists to create new works...

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

An Interplay of Shadow and Light

Australasian Dance Collective finally presented its second iteration of the triple bill “Three” to a very eager audience. Originally slated to be performed back in February, the Brisbane floods caused the production to be halted in its tracks. Mid-tech rehearsal everything stopped—the dancers were evacuated, the theatre flooded, and people patiently waited to hear about the future of “Three.” Thankfully, nearly five months later, the production was staged in all its sensory splendour, and audiences flocked to the theatre to support the three new Australian works.

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.