Wicked Moves with Christopher Scott
Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) steps down the steps, rests her hat on the floor and takes in the Ozdust Ballroom in Wicked. She elevates her arm, bringing her bent wrist to her temple.
PlusWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
In Seoul, South Korea, at the Jongmyo shrine, a royal ancestral ritual of prescribed music and dance is performed annually. The tradition to praise and honor the ancestors of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) has been kept for over 600 years. This dance form, called ilmu, which translates as “line dance” or “one dance,” requires 64 dancers positioned in eight lines of eight moving as one in restrained unison. Wearing long, full, colored robes and carrying symbolic props in their hands, the dancers perform the slow, controlled, set sequences reinforcing Confucian ideals—order, harmony of yin and yang, and filial piety—in the service of societal stability. Similar rituals were originally practiced in China as well, but the practices were discontinued there with the abolition of the monarchy.
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Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) steps down the steps, rests her hat on the floor and takes in the Ozdust Ballroom in Wicked. She elevates her arm, bringing her bent wrist to her temple.
PlusThe Sarasota Ballet does not do a “Nutcracker”—they leave that to their associate school. Instead, over the weekend, the company offered a triple bill of which just one ballet, Frederick Ashton’s winter-themed “Les Patineurs,” nodded at the season.
PlusI couldn’t stop thinking about hockey at the New York City Ballet’s “Nutcracker” this year, and not only because the stage appeared to be made of ice: there were a slew of spectacular falls one night I attended.
PlusLast week, during the first Fjord Review Dance Critics’ Festival, Mindy Aloff discussed and read from an Edwin Denby essay during “The Critic’s Process” panel.
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