Icons of Paris
If Notre-Dame remains one of the enduring symbols of Paris, standing at the city’s heart in all its beauty, much of the credit belongs to Victor Hugo.
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Float like a Butterfly
Sans tutu or pointe shoes, New York Ballet principal Sara Mearns delivered a knock-out punch in her 20-minute solo, “Zebra.”
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Mishima’s Muse
Japan Society’s Yukio Mishima centennial series culminated with “Mishima’s Muse – Noh Theater,” which was actually three programs of traditional noh works that Japanese author Yukio Mishima adapted into modern plays.
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Take Me to Church
On December 11th, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presented two premieres and two dances that had premiered just a week prior.
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In Contrasting Light
The “Contrastes” evening is one of the Paris Opéra Ballet’s increasingly frequent ventures into non-classical choreographic territory.
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Robot Love
I’m in the audience of the Pit to watch Kaori Ito’s solo performance, “Robot, l'amour éternel.” It’s in the blackbox performing space at the New National Theatre Tokyo, intimate and close. The stage is an open, raised platform, gauzy white fabric covering the floor.
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Everything Is Romantic
An enchanted forest, a love gone wrong, and a swarm of women in long white tutus—when a formula works, it really works. Such is the case of “La Sylphide,” the nearly 200-year-old Romantic ballet which first premiered in 1832.
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In the Land of Loki
In 1954, George Balanchine created a “Nutcracker” that was based on the classical Mariinsky production he danced in his childhood, utilizing the neoclassical style he honed in NYC. His version has become so renowned that in 1993, his name and the trademark symbol have been added to the title (even on the merch).
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Lycra and Lace
What is he looking at? The dancer in a blue biketard bounds around the stage, his curly hair flip-flopping as his head snaps right, left, and center.
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Spellbound
Two performers crawl in on hands and knees wearing neon green, hooded coveralls—the lightweight papery kind made for working in a sterile environment—and clusters of balloons pinned to their backs.
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Green Light
Will Rawls makes boundaries visible by defying them. Known for the disciplinary and topical range of his projects, the choreographer, director, and performer approaches issues of representation in “[siccer],” a multi-part, multi-site work co-presented by L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival. A live performance at Performance Space New York accompanies a multimedia installation at the Kitchen, a book published by Wendy’s Subway, and an album published by the artist. With a creative process reaching back to 2018, the work delves explicitly into pandemic-era energies and inertias with focused intimacy and a pervasive sense of instability.
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Home and Away
It is always interesting when multiple theme steps emerge over the course of a mixed repertory evening, but it is uncanny on one featuring five different ballets, each with a different choreographer and composer, covering a twenty-year span (2005-2025).
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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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