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REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Living Archive

He’s collaborated with some of the world’s most notable boldfaced names, including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jack and Meg White of the White Stripes. He’s also served as movement director in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But one of Wayne McGregor’s most recent collaborators is, perhaps, his most audacious yet—the Google Arts & Culture Lab, the results of which, “Living Archive: An AI Performance Experiment,” was seen onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last weekend in a program dubbed, “Adès & McGregor: A Dance Collaboration.”

FEATURES | REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Story Lines

Prologue

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Light and Shade

A bevy of black swans circled our car parked near to the lake’s edge. It was my first encounter with a black swan, nose to beak, separated only by a wind-up wind-down window pane. I would have been no taller than one of the swans, had I’ve been out of the car. I remember feeling awestruck by their scale, their very presence. And yet as I was four years of age, or thereabouts, is this a later addition stitched to a memory derived from family folklore? My mum recalled one of the swans hopped up on the car’s bonnet, but wonders...

DANCE FILM | By Penelope Ford

Movement in Structure

John Lam, principal dancer of Boston Ballet, and director Shaun Clarke collaborated on the dance film, Movement in Structure, which premiered in Boston in March 2019. Set to music by Lucas Vidal, and filmed at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts, Movement in Structure calls attention to our physical relationship with space. In the interview below, John Lam discusses his artistic and personal motivations for creating dance on film.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Two Premieres and a Reprise

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s latest bill, “[Un]leashed,” treats us to two premieres and a reprised 2012 ballet, all from female choreographers. It’s an attractive offering, somewhat unfocused but capably danced and dressed with some handsome moments.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

The Pit and the Podium

Masculinity is at the core of Gary Clarke's best work: from “Bagofti” which used masks to distort through Francis Bacon's violent triptychs, to the surreal, dreamlike “2 Men and A Michael” and “Horsemeat,” his is an iconoclastic approach to the representation of modern men. So it is with “Wasteland,” the follow-up to his award-winning “Coal.” “Wasteland” interrogates the effects of the closure of mines (in this instance, the Grimethorpe Colliery) on the local working-class male community, and the galvanising influence of rave culture on the younger lads. Using film footage, video work from Charles Webber and live vocals from local...

DANCE FILM | By Penelope Ford

Dancing to the Street

Xin Ying, principal dancer of Martha Graham Dance Company, has been making improvised dances wherever her work takes her. The simply framed videos quickly became a highlight of Instagram. Often set in tourist hubs, busy streets and danced to ambient sound, her swift, modern movement strikes a contrast with the pedestrian setting. Originally from China, Ying moved to New York almost a decade ago to pursue her dream of becoming a modern dancer.

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Mark Morris' Moment

Much to his amazement, Mark Morris, once hailed by the New York Times as “the most successful and influential choreographer alive, and indisputably the most musical,” has a global hit on his hands with “Pepperland.” A groundbreaking dance tribute to the 50th anniversary of The Beatles iconic album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, the evening-length work, which was commissioned by the City of Liverpool in 2017 and has toured to rapturous audiences ever since, arrives at Segerstrom Center for the Arts June 14 for three performances.

REVIEWS | By Merli V. Guerra

Rhapsody

Boston Ballet closed its 2018-19 season with a touch of the new and a revival of the past with “Rhapsody,” a mixed program featuring seldom-seen works by Leonid Yakobson, alongside George Balanchine, and the world premiere of “ELA, Rhapsody in Blue” by Boston Ballet principal Paulo Arrais.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Rigour and vigour

It’s elaborate partnerwork and committed performances at programme C of San Francisco Ballet’s big London tour, a two-week bonanza of 12 UK premieres spread over four different mixed bills. This one features Liam Scarlett’s 2014 ballet “Hummingbird” sandwiched between 2018 works from Stanton Welch and Justin Peck. All three pieces invoke abstract themes and contemporary choreography, though their respective tones and textures vary widely.

REVIEWS | By Jade Larine

Arty-farty Nutcracker

Reuniting two separated siblings, opera and ballet, was Benjamin Millepied and Stéphane Lissner’s mantra. And so they did. The premiere of the extravagant double bill “Iolanta/The Nutcracker,” staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov, was a major highlight of the Paris Opera Ballet's 2015-2016 season. There wasn’t much left of the original 1892 version, though. Tcherniakov was much praised for endowing the two scattered works with a newfound unity, his “Nutcracker” responding to “Iolanta” in some ways.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Between the Lines

When asked to explain what her dance had meant, Isadora Duncan said: “if I could tell you what it meant, I wouldn’t have to dance it,” encapsulating the idea that dance, in its traditional sense, removes the need for words. The quote reminds us that the body is capable of expressing just as much as language; that physical expression, as Duncan pointed out, can capture the emotions, thoughts and images that exist around and beyond words.

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.