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REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Ode to Joy

Alexei Ratmansky’s ballet “Whipped Cream,” which is wrapping up a week-long run at American Ballet Theatre, is the very opposite of a cautionary tale. A young boy gorges on whipped cream, only to be felled by a belly ache. He is dragged off to the hospital, where he is tormented by a bulbous-headed doctor and hypodermic-wielding nurses. But then, lo and behold, a princess conveyed on a snow-yak (that’s right) and three dancing liquor bottles come to the rescue. The doctor and nurses get drunk, and the boy magically travels to an enchanted place filled with dancing, happy people, where...

TALKING POINTES | Claudia Lawson

David Hallberg, One Year On

For our bonus episode this season, we’re catching up with the Australian Ballet’s Artistic Director David Hallberg. Last season, David and I spoke about his life growing up in South Dakota, being bullied, training at the Paris Opera, becoming principal at American Ballet Theatre, and being the first American to be invited to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia. We talked about climbing back from his epic injury, his head space at that time, before taking over the Artistic Directorship of the Australian Ballet right in the middle of Covid. A year later we talk about what it's been like to...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Imaginative Reality

Crystal Pite’s “Flight Pattern,” created for the Royal Ballet in 2017, was noteworthy not just for its elegant storytelling but also its status as the first female-choreographed ballet to hit Covent Garden’s main stage this century. The half-hour ballet thrived on the power of the collective, marshalling three dozen dancers to tell an urgent chronicle about unity and strife, bodies breathing as one.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Art of War

The term, “theater of war,” as defined by the National Command Authorities, is the area of air, land and water that is, or may become, directly involved in the conduct of war. To Jacques Heim, founder, artistic director and choreographer of the 30-year old, Los Angeles-based troupe, Diavolo|Architecture™ in Motion, these words have taken on a literal meaning in the context of art: With veterans performing besides dancers in “S.O.S. – Signs of Strength,” which had its Los Angeles premiere in March and was seen as part of a double bill in Houston over the weekend, the work is searing,...

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

All That Jazz

LaTasha Barnes was dancing the Lindy Hop before she even knew it. In a 2021 interview with the New York Times, Barnes, who has come to international acclaim for her excellent performances in jazz and hiphop styles, said that the first time she tried Lindy partnering, her body already knew what to do. “I've felt this before,” she said, and, after consulting her grandmother, learned that she had actually been doing those moves since childhood.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Language of Love

A lot can happen in a handful of days. You can find your Romeo or Juliet. Make a declaration of eternal love. You can be impetuous for nightfall. You can be drawn into a portentous duel in a market place. You can come up against history and a family feud that has little to do with you. You can be sentenced to exile. You can be grief-stricken. It can all end in the Capulet family crypt.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

A Long View on Gala Fads

The Koch Theater was packed to the rafters for the New York City Ballet’s 10th Fall Fashion Gala. The evening’s honoree and mastermind, Sarah Jessica Parker, was unfortunately absent (due to a death in the family), but everyone else sure turned out: the evening raised a record-setting 3.4 million dollars. It was good to see the house stuffed to the fifth ring; the repertory performance I saw the Wednesday prior was a ghost town. I’m guessing the fabulously clad crowd was there for the fashion, but I was most eager to see Kyle Abraham’s new piece. His 2018 entry, “The Runaway,”...

TALKING POINTES | Claudia Lawson

Paul Mercurio: A life lived in fear is a life half-lived

30 years ago this year, a small independent film, by a first time director, and an unknown cast, hit our screens. That film was Strictly Ballroom. And so, for our final episode of Season 2 of Talking Pointes, I’m speaking with the legendary Paul Mercurio. Paul was born in Swan Hill in regional Victoria and started dancing after he saw his elder sister in a local dance class. With dad off the scene early, the family moved to Perth where Paul continued to train at the John Curtin Senior High School as it was known then, before, at 18, being accepted in the Australian Ballet School in...

FEATURES | By Candice Thompson

Dance Reflections

Choreography is often described as a kind of drawing crafted from the materials of time, space, and flesh. In describing “Crowd,” choreographer Gisèle Vienne expands on this idea, likening her work for fifteen dancers taking part in a rave on a stage to “paintings where you have thousands of characters and the details are kind of overwhelming.” The dancers narrate their individual stories kinetically as the piece unfolds like an all night party, their movements modulating between different feelings of time.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Dances with Gravity

In physics, the motion of a pendulum can be described as: θ(t) = θocos (ωt). In choreography and composition, the motion of a pendulum can also be described as Lucy Guerin and Matthias Schack-Arnott’s “Pendulum: a mesmerising dance with gravity.” In both, the data of time, length, and gravity come together in simple harmonic solution.

REVIEWS | By Karen Hildebrand

Final Run

There’s a lot going on in Yvonne Rainer’s “Hellzapoppin’ What about the bees?” performed by eight dance artists and actress Kathleen Chalfant as special guest. A founding member of Judson Dance Theater, writer, and experimental filmmaker, Rainer’s wit and breadth spans several mediums in her newest work. At 87, with two Guggenheims and the MacArthur Fellowship under her belt, Rainer claims this show is her finale.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Dangerous Desires

“Mayerling,” Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s 1978 ballet about Austria’s Crown Prince Rudolf, is steeped in death. The show is bookended by funeral scenes and centres on a grisly murder-suicide. MacMillan himself actually died backstage during a performance in 1992. And now, 30 years later, a revival meant to mark that national loss unfolds amid another one. Opening night was the Royal Ballet’s first performance since Queen Elizabeth II’s passing.

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.