World-class review of ballet and dance.
Andrea Schermoly’s Rite of Spring, a dance film created for Louisville Ballet and currently streaming until May 31st, opened to the sound of the wind blowing and an ominous sci-fi text reading: “Post apocalypse, a seeded band of humans struggle to survive on a frozen planet. Battling a viral plague, they await a sign of hope.”
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New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala featured excerpts by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and a new piece by Justin Peck—all filmed for the occasion by Sofia Coppola. Phillippe Le Sourd served as director of photography, Chad Sipkin edited, and Peck and Coppola were jointly credited for the concept—which placed snippets of dances all over the David H. Koch Theater as it reawakened from its long Covid slumber. The gala premiered on May 6th, but I sat down to watch it after I dropped my son off at preschool a few days later. This is the only upside to reviewing in...
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Pennsylvania Ballet’s recent virtual production, “Resilience,” presented a skillfully curated collection of ballets, beautifully reimagined for film. Contemporary works by Dwight Rhoden and Christopher Wheeldon balanced the classical nature of George Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante” (1956) and Angel Corella’s rendition of Marius Petipa’s “Raymonda Suite,” both of which were brilliantly executed. Yet it was Rhoden’s “And So It Is…” and Wheeldon’s “Polyphonia” that made “Resilience” exactly that—resilient.
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There's something of a disconnect when you watch a live performance of ballet on YouTube knowing that it is taking place 20 minutes from your house. Due to the latest State of Emergency issued by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Japanese capital has become a cultural and social wasteland. With news that many western nations are cracking on and making significant inroads with vaccination programs, it's disappointing and frustrating to see the Japanese authorities bungle, with outstanding levels of incompetency, the pathway out of this pandemic shitshow with a paltry one percent of the country being vaccinated at the time...
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Twice a year the Australian Ballet relocate to the Sydney Opera House from their home in Melbourne to debut major works. Known as their Sydney seasons, this is the first time the company have ventured to sunny Sydney since late 2019 and Covid shook the world. Under the new directorship of David Hallberg, and with Australia essentially Covid-free, the season was steeped in anticipation, excitement, but also pressure for the company. With Hallberg’s first Sydney offering New York Dialects already receiving rave reviews, the company now present Counterpointe—a triple bill of three bite-size dance delights; Act III from “Raymonda,” Balanchine’s...
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There’s about 14 different choreographies in this 13-minute long dance film, Dive. Some of them are bonkers. Some are sad. One has an alpaca.
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The Martha Graham Dance Company turned 95 on April 18th. The company celebrated this milestone with a trio of performances broadcast live from its studios last weekend. Viewers could purchase programs separately or as a three-pack. Past/Present was the most balanced and satisfying as a standalone. Otherwise, the three-pack was a rewarding investment, despite some overlap in programming and formatting issues.
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At first, there is nothing—just the cream and brown clad figure of Scottish Dance Theatre's guest dancer Yosuke Kusano who walks across a wooden floor. As the floor is bare, so too are his very exacting movements, just enough to infer tension: minimal, sharp and mired in a kind of self-protective series of gestures. A hand is raised like an alarm signal. He tiptoes. He moves instinctively, his body governed entirely by the feelings that exist in that exact moment. Suddenly, he pulls at something just visible to the side of his shoulder—a strand of hair that is seemingly not...
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For fifteen years, Duke Dang has been the bright, capable force behind Works & Process, a series that offers behind-the-scenes conversations about the creative process. Regularly, choreographers, composers, and designers have converged upon the postage-stamp-sized theater beneath the Guggenheim Museum to discuss their work and to show sneak peeks of premieres.[1]
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Belinda McGuire is a dance artist who splits her time between her native Toronto and Brooklyn. As a teen she danced with Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, before going on to build a career as an independent dance artist. A creative force, Belinda has produced and launched several one-woman shows, and performed as a company member with Doug Varone and Dancers, Gallim Dance, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Anne Plamondon, and Joshua Beamish's MoveTheCompany.
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On April 22, Moscow’s Concert Hall “Zaryadye” hosted the award ceremony of the winners of the XXVII Golden Mask Award. The three-hour-long celebration took place before a limited-capacity live audience and was streamed via various online platforms of the festival.
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Ballet22 is a new pick-up company in the San Francisco Bay Area born of one dancer with extraordinarily strong feet. Growing up in Puerto Rico, Roberto Vega Ortiz longed to dance on pointe, but his teachers said that wasn’t acceptable. So he practiced in private. Obsessively. And his pointe work became very, very good.
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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