An Artistic Evolution, in Fragments
Choreography wasn’t on Lia Cirio’s radar when artistic director Mikko Nissinen asked her to participate in Boston Ballet’s ChoreograpHER initiative in 2018.
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From the Belly to the Brain
French choreographer Lea Tirabasso makes dense, intricate work which explores existential concerns connected with science, nature and morality. Witty, vivid and visceral, her work pushes beyond simple genres or choreographic language, creating something far richer and more complex. Her most recent piece, “In the Bushes” is part of the Edinburgh Festival this year. Fjord Review caught up with Léa Tirabasso ahead of the Summerhall run.
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It Ends Like This
Stephen Petronio has an odd way of celebrating his 40th anniversary. He and his board have decided this season will be the company’s last.
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Mikko Nissinen, Dancing into the Future
After a successful dancing career with, among others, Dutch National Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, and finally San Francisco Ballet, where he was a principal dancer for a decade, Mikko Nissinen has proven himself a strategic, forward-looking and beloved artistic director of Boston Ballet.
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Jiří Kylián, Discipline and Freedom
The world-renowned Czech choreographer and multimedia artist Jiří Kylián was recently honored with a retrospective festival at the Oslo opera house.
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Olga Smirnova, Leaps and Bounds
Until March 2022, Olga Smirnova was one of the top dancers at the Bolshoi, performing roles in a large swathe of the repertory, everything from Odette in “Swan Lake” to Marguerite Gauthier in John Neumeier’s “Lady of the Camellias” and Bianca in Jean-Christophe Maillot’s “Taming of the Shrew.”
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Lincoln Jones, Serendipitous Moves
Talk about the marriage of music and dance! Following in the footsteps of George Balanchine, whose works with Igor Stravinsky stretched across decades, Lincoln Jones, artistic director and choreographer of American Contemporary Ballet, continues the tradition when his company dances the world premiere of “The Euterpides.”
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Looking Back, Moving Forward
One of the most important questions for any director who inherits a dance company from its founding choreographer is how to keep the repertory alive.
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Jennifer Archibald, On the Pulse
Jennifer Archibald’s choreography credits extend from ballet companies to commercial work, reflecting her signature ability to blend classical dance with hip hop.
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Counting on It
Listening to John Cage’s “Three Dances (for prepared piano)” is a wonderfully contradictory experience. The composer disrupts our auditory expectations by placing an assortment of small objects such as erasers, screws, and bolts, among the piano strings. A musician plays the piano in the typical manner, but instead of a harmonic tone, we hear more percussive sounds of kettle drums, timpani, xylophone, tin cans, even bells. One can imagine how an artist like Lucinda Childs, who was part of the Judson Dance Theater radicals in the ‘60s, might be attracted to such a composition. The choreographer is perhaps best known...
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Harper Watters, On his Toes
If ballet and politics were ever a thing, Houston Ballet principal Harper Watters is, perhaps, one of its staunchest advocates.
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Motivation for Moving
Petite in stature, with beautiful, delicate features, Scottish dance artist Suzi Cunningham is nonetheless a powerhouse performer: an endless shape shifter whose work ranges from eerie to strange, to poignant, or just absolutely hilarious.
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Teenage Angst and Institutions
Watching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...
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The Me of Today
The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
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Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.
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America, F**K Yeah
After a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.
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Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup
An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
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