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.
To begin her creative process, the legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch often asked her dancers questions. These questions—and further, the thoughts and deeper rumblings they provoked in the dancers—then formed the basis for many of her pieces. Bausch was typically concerned with the emotional and psychological charge of the bodies she choreographed on, and no piece showcases this more than her 1982 masterwork “Nelken.” Premiered eight years before the reunification of Germany, and haunted by other atrocities of that country’s not-so-distant past, “Nelken” does not escape shades of brutality; still, its primary concern seems to lie in the various ways our closest relationships can provide comfort. How, Bausch seems to ask, can we care for each other despite the horrors?
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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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