World-class review of ballet and dance.
Aaron Robison's dancing has taken him around the world and back again. The former principal at San Francisco Ballet and Houston Ballet soloist returned last year to his native UK to join Tamara Rojo's English National Ballet at the highest rank. He danced in the recent world premiere of William Forsythe's “Playlist (Track 1, 2)”—the first new Forsythe work mounted on a British company in more than two decades, and was the poster-child for the bill, “Voices of America.”
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Born in Cherbourg, northern France, Sophie Martin is one of Scottish Ballet's best-loved dancers and a real secret weapon, having been a principal dancer with the company since 2008. A rare and highly intuitive talent, she combines rich, graceful movement with expressive and versatile acting skills—from Vaudeville-infused choreography to classical, through to more contemporary lines.
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Since 1987, Deborah Abel Dance Company has presented modern dance productions of the highest caliber in Boston, Massachusetts, and abroad. Based in Lexington, MA, the company aims “to remind us of a level of connection with ourselves and others that gets buried in everyday life, and which the arts are uniquely qualified to uncover.”
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“I’m a choreographer because I’m interested in connecting with people, in connecting to audiences, and in connecting with people I’ve worked with—performers—as a way of finding common ground. There’s something about the presence of story,” said internationally acclaimed choreographer, Crystal Pite.
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In an essay, “Grandmother Spider,” writer Rebecca Solnit describes a painting by Ana Teresa Fernandez. The painting shows an image of a woman, hanging out laundry, entirely covered by the sheet she's pinning to the line; only visible her fingertips and below the ankle. She's wearing heels, “as if to go dancing,” Solnit suggests. I was reminded of the photograph Elena Lobsanova, principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada, taken by Karolina Kuras, where Lobsanova is similarly concealed, and revealed by fabric; revealed in outline, as woman, as artist. Yet, this woman wears pointe shoes; she is dancing.
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“When they said glitter, I immediately thought—no,” photographer Karolina Kuras was somewhat wary of truckloads of glitter entering her Toronto studio for a photoshoot with Brent Parolin, second soloist of the National Ballet of Canada. And yet, the results are nothing less than, well, sparkling. Makeup and styling by Ashley Readings.
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It was my first visit to the Dance Commons, home of ODC/Dance nestled in San Francisco’s Mission District. Brenda Way, artistic director of ODC, looking summery on this Friday morning despite a bandaged ankle (nothing serious, routine dancer injury), met me in the foyer and took me on a tour.
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“I am the daughter of two immigrant parents from Venezuela and I was born in the United States. I happen to be very fair, blonde, blue eyes but I just got all the recessive genes in the family, basically,” Sasha De Sola beams.
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“I grew up in a rural area of South Central Pennsylvania. The arts aren’t a big thing there but my parents are actually both in the arts. My father plays the oboe in the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania.” For Julia Rowe, soloist with San Francisco Ballet, it's all about the music.
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Sarah Hay, dancer-turned-actor and star of Starz channel 2015 TV drama, “Flesh and Bone,” recently moved to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career. We took a walk with her on the beach as she talked us through her transition from stage to studio. Photographs by Karolina Kuras, dresses by Louiza Babouryan.
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Of dancing in the premiere of Liam Scarlett's“Frankenstein,” San Francisco Ballet dancer Isabella Walsh notes, “it's kind of a sad ballet, but really interesting. It's like nothing I’ve done before.” Walsh, who joined the company in 2016 as an apprentice and is newly promoted to corps de ballet, is getting used to traversing new ground.
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One of the “little upgrades” of having been knighted, said renowned director and choreographer Matthew Bourne, was being able to score tickets to “Hamilton.” And while Sir Matthew received one of the United Kingdom’s highest honors last year for services to dance from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace, he seems even more excited and—yes—astonished at the 30th anniversary of his troupe, New Adventures. Founded in 1987 and formerly called Adventures in Motion Pictures, it is a resident company at Sadler’s Wells.
PlusWatching 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,...
PlusThe 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.
PlusAfter 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.
PlusAn “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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