Cross country
Welcomed back to Los Angeles for the first time in 22 years (but who’s counting!), New York City Ballet made a triumphant return to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in two separate programs.
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Summer Swans
Like picnicking in Central Park, catching the ferry to the Rockaways, or heading to Citifield for a Mets game, American Ballet Theatre’s “Swan Lake” is a well-established summer tradition for countless New Yorkers.
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On Point
Pointeworks is the new kid on the block in San Diego’s thriving dance scene. Founded by Sophie Williams, a dancer with Texas Ballet Theatre and a San Diego native who grew up training in Solana Beach, the company says it seeks to provide off-season work for dancers and highlight female choreographers.
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Idol Dreams
Conceived by a Frenchman in imperial Russia and restaged by a Russian in post-Cold War France, “La Bayadère” periodically returns to the Paris Opera stage with its fakirs, idols and opium dreams.
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Mirror Images
A carousel spins in the middle of the grassy area outside Colonels Row on Governors Island. For the next three hours, mirrored vertical bars that form a cage on the spinning structure will reflect changing light, flashes of audience faces, and the green of surrounding trees, as late afternoon settles into dusk.
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An Artless Caravaggio
The life of artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) is ripe for dramatic interpretation.
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Puzzles, Work, and Resolve
It’s absolutely wonderful seeing a company at the top of their game. Scottish Dance Theatre at forty is a force to be reckoned with.
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Self-Portrait in the Making
Now in its second year, the Tate Modern’s Infinities Commission is awarded to a contemporary practitioner whose work proposes radical ways of thinking about performance, installation and time-based art.
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A Class Act
A ballet career necessitates lifelong scholarship. Professionals take a daily technique class that begins with the same pliés at the barre as absolute beginners. Most days at the School of American Ballet, New York City Ballet members are tucked into in a corner of the studio, honing their tendus alongside the top divisions.
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Liminal Moves
Jessica Lang is smack in the middle of a three-year stint as resident choreographer at Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. It’s an excellent artistic match that deserves to be followed closely, because both Lang and PNB merit a higher national profile.
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Golden Hour
The close-knit ballet scene in San Diego was dealt a blow when California Ballet, the company Maxine Mahon founded in 1968, folded in 2020. Insiders tell me the pandemic wasn’t entirely to blame, but since then, Golden State Ballet, still wet behind the ears, has risen in its place.
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Divine Summer
Now in its fifth year, Lincoln Center's “Summer for the City” festival is going all out for dance. This year, the festival will inaugurate the much-anticipated Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival in Alice Tully Hall, featuring five international companies, as well as a new outdoor contemporary dance series called Dance Encounters, presented outside on Hearst Plaza.
PlusFeatured Reads
Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
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Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
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School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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