Youthful Ideals
Artistic Director Miyako Yoshida’s “Giselle” for the National Ballet of Japan excavates emotional freshness within the familiar landscape of the 1841 Romantic classic.
PlusWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
The term ‘plateau effect’ describes the phenomenon of diminishing returns—that is, the reduced effectiveness over time of a once effective measure. Jefta van Dinther’s production by the same name does just that, putting forward a series of bold scenes, each of which ploughs ahead at a high-octane pace until the wow factor wears off and the audience adjusts to the sensory shock (think pulsing music, flashing lights, shuddering bodies). Van Dinther has a knack for detecting the very moment viewers have acclimatised, and it’s then that he throws another jolt into the mix, making for some powerful transitions. The one-act piece is loud and stimulating, and while the conceptual format can make it difficult at times to tell where it’s heading, the journey is certainly a fun one.
Performance
Place
Words
“Plateau Effect” by Jefta Van Dinther for Cullberg Ballet. Photograph by Urban Jörén
“Uncommonly intelligent, substantial coverage.”
Your weekly source for world-class dance reviews, interviews, articles, and more.
Already a paid subscriber? Login
Artistic Director Miyako Yoshida’s “Giselle” for the National Ballet of Japan excavates emotional freshness within the familiar landscape of the 1841 Romantic classic.
PlusAt a baseline, good art should move you. At its peak, it can change you. I did not expect to come out of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s season closer, Re-Act, a changed person, but that’s exactly the effect the performance—and particularly one work, Daniel Charon’s “From Code to Universe”—had on me.
PlusThe body as vessel; the body as memory container; the body as truth-teller. All of these corporeal permutations were on view at the UCLA Nimoy Theater last Thursday, when Eiko Otake and Wen Hui performed their haunting, elegiac and deeply meaningful work, “What is War.”
PlusIf ballet and politics were ever a thing, Houston Ballet principal Harper Watters is, perhaps, one of its staunchest advocates.
Plus
comments