World-class review of ballet and dance.
It begins in a place I know well. In the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria. Benedicte Bemet, who was promoted to coryphée in 2013, to soloist in 2016, to senior artist in 2018, and to principal artist in 2019 with The Australian Ballet, is seated at the far end of the hall. Beneath the prismatic revelation of Leonard French’s Great Hall ceiling (1963–67), Bemet is alone.
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With only a few words—“Lately, it has been considerably harder to rise,” Jacques Heim, founder and artistic director of the risk-intensive, hyper-physical dance troupe, Diavolo|Architecture in Motion, has managed to capture how so many of us are feeling during the unprecedented crisis perpetrated by Covid-19. These words, written by performer France Nguyen-Vincent frame Diavolo’s first foray into film, This Is Me: Letters from the Front Lines, which was commissioned by the Soraya and is available to view for free on that organization’s Facebook page.
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In the vast repertory of the Bolshoi Ballet, “Spartacus” holds a unique place. A thrilling mix of energy, athleticism and drama, this ballet is widely regarded as the famed Russian company’s most iconic work —the quintessential Bolshoi. Prominent dance critic Clive Barnes called it “the most successful Soviet ballet since ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”
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Straddling Northern California and Nevada at 6200 feet, Lake Tahoe is a natural wonder but hardly an artistic hotbed. Christin Hanna grew up as a culturally isolated “bunhead” there, on the north rim of the lake. She trained in Reno, and at American Ballet Theatre’s summer program, and made the leap to New York in her twenties, taking class at STEPS on Broadway with Willie Burmann and eventually dancing with the New Chamber Ballet at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The Pillow was revelatory to this dancer with a keen sense of history and a deep respect for the importance...
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“Let us remember, we’re fighting two viruses,” the choreographer Kyle Abraham writes on the A.I.M (Abraham in Motion) website. In what is a perfect response to both, the Joyce Theater is streaming a performance of his piece “Meditation: A Silent Prayer” online through August 24th. Though this work premiered in 2018, it seems tailor-made for the Black Lives Matter reckoning of today. Of course, the racism and bloodshed “Meditation” addresses have been around for centuries, but the piece is frighteningly apropos to the current pressure cooker moment. Running just ten minutes, “Meditation” is an ideal length for our digitally-dependent quarantine....
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The finest choreographers have not only a signature style, but walk their own creative paths—think Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Crystal Pite, Michael Clark, Botis Seva and Sharon Eyal. All are idiosyncratic visionaries with their own stylistic quirks and traits. All have raised eyebrows, and raised the roof with their work, which may not be rooted in the comfort of traditions and familiarity, but rather, leave indelible marks on the viewer. If you can make an audience member squirm, laugh, feel puzzled, or even aroused—sometimes, all at once—job done! The best artists create worlds within worlds. So it is with genius...
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Nederlands Dans Theater’s brand new work “Standby” is a dance of irresistible energy, galvanizing athleticism and touching poignancy; it’s also an ingenious and masterly realized work of art created in the time of pandemic. Choreographed in just three weeks and captured exclusively on film to be streamed on the company’s website and NDT’s YouTube channel, “Standby” is described by its creator, Paul Lightfoot, as a ballet inspired by the limitations and possibilities of social distancing. “Can we connect without touch?” With this brilliant dance, the choreographer answered this question affirmatively.
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Adji Cissoko, acclaimed dancer with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, was on tour in Europe with the company when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. During the lockdown period, she has been characteristically productive. We spoke to Adji recently about managing her time away from the studio, her new creative projects, and her new social enterprise as a Health and Life Coach.
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This endlessly fascinating series Danceworks from BBC Four, produced by Sadler's Wells and directed by Andy Dunn, is a welcome peek into the creative process of four disparate companies, developing and touring new pieces. It's also an intimate window into residencies and the rehearsal spaces that are usually off-limits to audiences. The details are fascinating: a thrilled or bemused audience member's face; costumes hanging up to dry which resemble shedded skins, flying footwork tapping on dusty floors, the concentration of a choreographer as his, her or their creations burst into vivid life. Each episode is very different, but provides new...
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Like dance companies the world over, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Australia’s premier Indigenous performing arts company, went into lockdown. As Covid-19 restrictions begin to ease in Australia, I spoke with Bangarra’s formidable and inspirational leader, Artistic Director Stephen Page. What follows is a condensed version of our conversation, where Stephen talks about the soul searching Bangarra has undertaken, the energy of audience, the responsibility of telling First Nation stories, and what the Black Lives Matter movement means to him.
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From the wide variety of ballet performances that have been streamed on Mariinsky.TV during the last four months, “Giselle” holds a place of its own. It’s a unique and exceptionally-made 2016 recording of the beloved 19th-century classic, produced by Telmondis, with Mariinsky Theatre, Mezzo, France Télévisions, and featuring the company’s prima, Diana Vishneva, in the title role and Étoile of Opéra National de Paris, Mathieu Ganio, in the role of Count Albrecht.
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Few choreographers made work which endures and resonates like the mighty Pina Bausch. She wasn't just an iconoclastic presence, she created work that still shocks, gets under the skin and into the marrow, and feels so visceral that it is timeless—whether it was through certain nuanced presentations of violence or societal taboos; staging work in unusual locations or bringing older and younger dancers together as twinned iterations of themselves. She stripped back veneers of genteel bourgeois respectability. She got down and dirty, she provoked, teased at larger truths about the human condition, and kept it real. Work was not always...
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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