Tanztheater All-Stars
London loves Pina Bausch. The Tanztheater legend is an annual fixture at Sadler’s Wells, and her work still manages to be one of the hottest tickets in town.
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Latest
Opposite Week
I caught the New York City Ballet’s two Winter Season premieres last week, and it seems that opposites are still attracting over at the Koch Theater.
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Tears of a Clown
Created in the early sixties, Glen Tetley’s “Pierrot Lunaire” is a rarely revived little dance oddity.
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Steps in Time
The National Ballet of Japan’s annual triple bill of dance, “Ballet Coffret” binged on three neoclassical favorites this year: David Dawson’s “A Million Kisses to my Skin” (2000) Hans van Manen’s “5 Tango’s” (1977) and George Balanchine’s “Themes and Variations” (1947).
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Dancers by Nature
Carolyn Carlson stands as one of the defining figures of contemporary dance. An American visionary shaped by the radical kinetic thinking of Alwin Nikolais in 1960s New York, she arrived in Europe in 1971 as a seismic force, dismantling the rigid hierarchies of the classical world to forge a new path for modernism. In 1974, she was appointed Étoile Chorégraphe, a title created specifically for her at the Opéra de Paris, where she led the pioneering Groupe de Recherches Théâtrales until 1980. Decades later, she would once again redraw institutional boundaries as the founding director of the Venice Biennale’s first...
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Tend the Garden
The modern classic “Le Parc” by Angelin Preljocaj is a masterpiece that never ceases to interrogate the dialectic of nature and culture, confronting human behaviour as shaped by societal norms or driven by raw emotion.
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Recital Revival
Few established artists hold recitals anymore. The word “recital” feels both elementary and antiquated, evoking either children parading across an auditorium stage or a nineteenth-century drawing room where the gentry whisper secrets around a pianoforte.
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Crash Out Queens
It’s not often that one gets to hear a soprano recital in an up-close-and-personal setting. And it’s even rarer that said soprano has a pair of dancers moving about the stage as part of the performance.
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Twenty Years of Los Angeles Ballet
The ballet community in Los Angeles, quite large and scattered, is fond of opining that they live in a “tough town for ballet.”
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Refuge and Resistance
In a week of humanitarian crisis, of bodies mobilised and menaced, what a privilege it’s been to take refuge in art that radiates integrity, conviction and splendour.
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Opposite Day
George Balanchine famously said, “ballet is woman.” But unusually, in “Kammermusik No. 2,” he featured an all-male corps de ballet. I can think of one other men-only Balanchine dance, and it happens to be running the same week this winter season: “Prodigal Son.”
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It Takes Two
What makes a good partner? For the dancers of New York City Ballet who are lined up on the stage—KJ Takahashi, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Emma Von Enck, and Sara Mearns—the answer is different, though together, their responses create a pretty comprehensive prescription. A good partner should be collaborative, honest, present, and sensitive.
PlusFeatured Reads
Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
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Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
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School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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