World-class review of ballet and dance.
A delightful production, served with verve: the National Ballet of Japan’s recent performance of “Alice in Wonderland” was an unabashed celebration of imagination, deftly showcasing all the wacky wonder of Christopher Wheeldon’s modern ballet classic.
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Casual perfection. Studied grace. Spontaneous elegance. These are but a few of the words that came to mind when this writer observed nine gorgeous dancers from LA Dance Project and four students from the Trudi Zipper Dance Institute at the Colburn School, cavorting around the courtyard and grounds of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts last Friday in Janie Taylor’s “Anthem.”
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So, shoe me! Seriously, there have been countless iterations of the ballet “Cinderella,” all pivoting around footwear, whether pointe, glass or golden slippers. Indeed, this particular terpsichorean fairytale can be traced back to the early nineteenth century, but it wasn’t until Prokofiev finished his brooding Romantic score in 1944 that choreographers, including Frederick Ashton, Rudolf Nureyev and Alexei Ratmansky, began telling the tale of fairy godmothers, crystal coaches and a rags-to-riches heroine.
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There’s a small moment in Rena Butler’s new “Cracks” that I think only could have become possible at Pacific Northwest Ballet, which commissioned it. At stage right, two tall dancers, both dressed like Catholic school students in pleated skirts and polo shirts, pas de bourrée and then rebound out of a sissonne into more pointe work. Both dancers have strong, well-shaped feet, compact hips, lyrically expressive torsos, and wide shoulders. Only after a few bars of music could I confirm that the dancers were Elle Macy, who is female-identifying, and Zsilas Michael Hughes, who is gender-nonbinary.
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This year marked the 60th anniversary of the School of American Ballet’s annual Workshop Performances. The programming was unusually democratic this year.
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The title of Catherine Tharin’s latest production, “In the Wake of Yes,” is a reference to “Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy,” an inner monologue on womanhood and sexuality, from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Tharin matches the tone of this work as she picks up on an exuberant string of “yeses” from that text. Her witty series of dances explores romance and its complications. At the center of the show is a film by Lora Robertson that lifts the dancers out of the tiny East Village stage and transports them (and us) to scenes of contemporary New York City. Tharin, who danced with the...
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Through its newly opened program, “Other Dances,” Dutch National Ballet kicks off the summer with a slate of lighthearted fare that varies in precise approach but altogether evokes an effervescent mood.
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Taking the historian’s long view, the message within “Last and First Men,” that “the whole duration of humanity, its evolution, and many successive species, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos,” is, to me, ultimately a comfort.
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While the ghosts of, among others, Judy Garland, Jack Benny and the cast of “All in the Family” might be haunting Television City’s soundstage 33 in Los Angeles, the dancers of American Contemporary Ballet (ACB), took metaphoric flight on Thursday when they performed the world premiere of, “The Euterpides.”
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“Into the Hairy”—the 45-minute ballet by choreographer Sharon Eyal and her creative collaborator Gai Behar—sets the tone immediately. Dancers dressed in arachnid-like unitards have a severe look, with black eye makeup that drips intensely down their cheeks, gothic and dramatic.
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Transformation is inevitable—and necessary in order to persist. That’s a theme that runs through two new works staged by Rotterdam’s Scapino Ballet in “Origin,” a program focused entirely on emerging choreographic talent.
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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