Winning Works
The late John Ashford, a pioneer in programming emerging contemporary choreographers across Europe, once told me that he could tell what sort of choreographer a young artist would turn into when watching their first creations.
PlusWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
A participatory eagerness, a desire to be part of something sweet and beautiful, suffused the return of George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to San Francisco Ballet on the cusp of spring. Many audience members inside the War Memorial Opera House wore pastel silk or lace, and adorned their heads with delicate flower garlands purchased from the company gift shop. On stage, the dancers were even more finely arrayed: For this production, artistic director Tamara Rojo borrowed the sets and costumes by Christian Lacroix created for Paris Opera Ballet in 2017. The whole visual package had a feeling of old world, hand-crafted care, not only in Lacroix’s unbelievably detailed second act tutus (white lace on top, pink tulle in a bright rim below), but especially in the hand painted sets with their giant pansies shading Titania’s bower. Most remarkably, none of this upstaged the dancing.
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The late John Ashford, a pioneer in programming emerging contemporary choreographers across Europe, once told me that he could tell what sort of choreographer a young artist would turn into when watching their first creations.
PlusLast weekend, the Royal New Zealand Ballet hosted two nights of performance in collaboration with the Scottish Ballet at the St. James’ Theatre in Wellington, New Zealand. The bill included two works by choreographers affiliated with Scottish Ballet, and two by RNZB choreographers. There was welcome contrast in timbre and tempo, and common themes of self-actualisation and connection, through a love of dance. As RNZB artistic director Ty King-Wall announced in the audience address, the two-night only performance was in the spirit of “bringing the companies together in mutual admiration and respect.”
PlusWho knew that a PB & J sandwich could conjure Proust’s madeleine? Certainly not this writer. But it’s not farfetched to think that Lincoln Jones, the artistic director, choreographer and conceptual guru of American Contemporary Ballet, had the idea of memory in mind when he conceived “Homecoming.”
PlusThe Korean Cultural Center New York presented the ChangMu Dance Company this past week and treated the public to an artistic gem. ChangMu Dance Company, currently with fourteen dancers, was founded in 1976 by Kim MaeJa, a pioneer of Korean “creative dance.”
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