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Living Doll
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Living Doll

On a Tuesday night, I fancied myself carved from the pages of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. I cast myself as Gwenda Reed from “Sleeping Murder.” The year was 1951, and I pinned a bakelite Bluebird of Happiness brooch to my coat lapel. I swapped The Duchess of Malfi for “Coppélia” because this was fantasy, and made for the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. And true to the liberties of daydream, 1951 rolled into both 1962, when the Australian Ballet first performed “Coppélia”during its inaugural season, and 1979, when founding artistic director Peggy van Praagh and former theatre director George Ogilvie...

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It’s the Time of the Season
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

It’s the Time of the Season

Frederick Ashton’s sun-soaked “La Fille mal gardée” isn’t the most obvious choice for a fall production, but its cheery pastels and verdant setting are, I can attest, an excellent antidote to the autumnal dusk starting to settle over London.

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Ballet Austin
REVIEWS | Par Jonelle Seitz

Corps Strength

Ballet Austin opened its season with a triple bill titled to announce the company’s upcoming monthlong, 150-city tour of China—its first performances in that country. Two works the company will tour, artistic director Stephen Mills’s “Wolftanzt” and “Liminal Glam,” sandwiched Lar Lubovitch’s “Dvořák Serenade.” Taken as a whole, the program was a study of ensemble: How does an ensemble hang together? In what ways is it threatened? Because Ballet Austin is an unranked company, such questions are especially intriguing.

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Alexander Whitley
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

Shadow Play

This performance of Alexander Whitley’s “Pattern Recognition,” which premiered at London’s Platform Theatre in April, was the kick-off to a five-leg autumn tour around the UK. The London-based choreographer has teamed up with digital designer Memo Akten to create a 50-minute contemporary work that uses motion-responsive technology to explore themes of consciousness, memory and fragmentation in the digital age. The technology comes in the form of eight chunky floor lamps that sense and track the dancers’ movements, responding with their own illuminated patterns. The lights, the programme makes clear, “are not pre-programmed but are driven only by the movement of...

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L-E-V
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Elderkin

Ritual & Rhythm

A fast ticking rhythm counteracts the slow, hyperextended movements of a solo dancer. Her back to the audience she moves with creeping extensions, her articulate body creating enticing distortions. Eventually a man enters and parades in circles around her, the statuesque stillness of his slow walks the antidote to her rippling, insect-like contortions.

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In the Wild Loop
REVIEWS | Par Victoria Looseleaf

In the Wild Loop

Living up to its post-postmodern moniker, Diavolo|Architecture in Motion™ not only rocked its 14-by-17 foot undulating boat in the troupe’s 1999 classic work, “Trajectoire,” but shook the rafters of the Broad Stage in four sold-out performances over the first weekend of autumn. Founded and directed by Paris-born Jacques Heim in 1992, the Los Angeles-based company kicked off its 25th anniversary season in fine style.

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Blowin' Up
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Blowin' Up

The warmth of the spring day did not hold in the Substation. Inside the capacious, high-ceilinged, former industrial space, it is never warm. It is resolutely sub-temperature. Seated for the first of three solos presented under the collective awning of “Blowin’ Up,” I sat, cleared my throat, and cleared my throat again. The cold of the building crept inside my chest with the intention to make me the spluttering, wheezing, noisy audience member. My defence of stoicism and Soothers was going to be tested.

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Marc Brew
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

The Possibilities of Love

Fragile, delicate things must be handled with great care. So it is with choreographer/dancer Marc Brew's “MayBe,” conceived and directed by Natália Mallo in collaboration with him. It is a thing of profound beauty.

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Nijinsky
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

The Allure of Nijinsky

“Throwing his body up to a great height for a moment, he leans back, his legs extended, beats an entrechat-sept, and, slowly turning over onto his chest, arches his back and, lowering one leg, holds an arabesque in the air. Smoothly in this pure arabesque, he descends to the ground…. From the depths of the stage with a single leap, assemblé entrechat-dix, he flies towards the first wing.”[note]Bronislava Nijinska describing Vaslav Nijinsky’s Paris debut in Michel Fokine’s “Le Pavillon d’Armide,” from Bronislava Nijinska: Early Memoirs, trans. ed. Irina Nijinska and Jean Rawlinson (California: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), 270-271[/note] Vaslav Nijinsky...

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Sleeping Beauty
REVIEWS | Par Jade Larine

A Jet-lagged Sleeping Beauty

Few personalities in the ballet world question the essence of classical dance nowadays. Masterpieces such as “The Nutcracker” or “Swan Lake” are little more than gainful blockbusters in December programs. “The Sleeping Beauty” is no exception: its seemingly Manichean argument, happy-ending, fairies' parade and decorative choreography had plunged the ballet into formaldehyde for centuries. So, when a modern-minded choreographer took on an age-old fairytale ballet, one could think that the outcome had to be of the cerebral type, for a few jaded balletomanes to enjoy. Fortunately, Ratmansky’s revival is anything but a pedantic throwback to the days of yore. He doesn’t lecture...

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Rolling Stones
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Rolling Stones

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”[note]Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 119[/note] To me, this is what the creative process can feel like. Creativity is resilience and determination that comes to the fore when tested; when we “re-visit, re-spond and re-invent.”[note]Melanie Lane, Re-make artists statement, Next Move programme, Chunky Move, Melbourne, Victoria, September 2016[/note]...

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Alvin Ailey
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Elderkin

After the Rain

In a programme by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater you can almost guarantee a performance of formidable athleticism from a company of accomplished, rhythmical dancers. As the world famous company embark on a UK tour, their opening programme at Sadler's Wells, London, does not disappoint.

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Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard
Starry Nights

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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