A Danced Rituel
When Frank Gehry was tapped to be the architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, he envisioned the space to be “a living room for the city.”
PlusWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
Belgian-French choreographer, dancer and performer Damien Jalet's extraordinary works seem to be not quite of this Earth: they are comprised of a not altogether human landscape, a liminal space of knotted limbs. His complex choreography creates a fleshy mass that means his dancers are more akin to animals. He others the corporeal, wherein it often becomes hard to differentiate between plant and mammal. Bodies entwine and hands grasp like pincers or gnarled tree branches. At times, the spectator is reminded of paintings, either from Goya who referenced the horrors of civil war, or Francis Bacon's Screaming Popes. This is uncomfortable, visceral work that sits in the marrow.
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When Frank Gehry was tapped to be the architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, he envisioned the space to be “a living room for the city.”
PlusSan Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House is a grand, gracious theater, so it was a big deal to see the San Francisco Ballet School hold its end-of-year performances in that hall for the first time since at least 1985.
PlusAt its heart, “Sylvia” is a ballet about the resistance to love—a theme that continues to resonate deeply, as the human spirit often recoils from love, driven by fear, pride, a need for control, or the weight of duties and moral constraints.
PlusSince the 1970s, the Paris Opera Ballet has cultivated a distinctive tradition of nurturing its own dancers as emerging choreographers.
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