The Tragedy of Hamlet
Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, “Hamlet” might seem the hardest to adapt into dance. Its long soliloquies and a titular character stymied by indecision do not immediately scream movement potential.
Plus
Latest
- Tout
- BOOKSHELF
- DANCE FILM
- FEATURES
- FIELD NOTES
- INTERVIEWS
- OPINION
- OTHER
- REVIEWS
- SCREEN DANCE
- TALKING POINTES
A Birthday Suite
Complexions Contemporary Ballet turned 30 this year, and their two-week residency at the Joyce Theater was a party.
Plus
Dance to the Music
BalletX concluded its 2024 season in its new home, the Suzanne Roberts Theatre across from the Wilma, a theater that had been its home for 18 years.
Plus
An Evening with Omar
A duet featuring the choreographer himself was an unexpected treat when Boca Tuya, founded in 2018 by Omar Román de Jesús, took the stage at 92NY last week. De Jesús is a scintillating model for the liquid, undulating movement style that flows through all three works of the evening.
Plus
Balanchine's America
George Balanchine loved American culture because he loved America. He had lived through tyranny and chaos as a boy in the Russian Revolution, and though his displays of affection for his adopted homeland could border on silly (like the Western bolo ties he favored as fashion statements), he never took for granted the possibilities he found here, never stopped extolling America’s freshness and energy.
Plus
Human Movement
Midway through “Frontera,” the dancers of Animals of Distinction, a multimedia dance company based out of Montreal, press their bodies into each other to form a line at the bottom of a large rectangle of blue light.
Plus
A Liberated Congress
“Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” said Mickey Rooney to Judy Garland in the definitive Depression-era musical film, Babes in Arms, lo those many years ago. Well, if Denna Thomsen and Zak Ryan Schlegel had been around back then, what a show they would have mounted!
Plus
The Body as Archive
All too often it seems the human memory is too short. History is easily forgotten and, in a week where Americans are still processing the results of the presidential election, it is hard not to feel like we are doomed to repeat ourselves.
Plus
Dance not Tell
Eyeballs, screaming crones, and bloody axes were projected on a scrim at the top of American Ballet Theater’s new production of “Crime and Punishment.” Not bad for Halloween programming! Yet, despite Isobel Waller-Bridge’s cinematic, pressure-cooker score—which frequently evoked escape room music—there was very little suspense in Helen Pickett and James Bonas’s new narrative full-length.
Plus
New World Record
Records are for keeping. A record of the past in permanent form, an account. An official report. The sum of past achievements. The best, most remarkable event of its kind, a world record, no less.
Plus
The Dreamer's Life
A stool, a clothesline, a hanging sheet. But for these three things, the stage set for “Woolgathering” was largely empty. “Woolgathering” is a ‘spoken word opera’ directed and composed by Oliver Tompkins Ray with choreography by John Heginbotham, inspired by the poetic memoir by Patti Smith.
Plus
Flaws in the Short Game
The American Ballet Theatre’s opening bill was not a hole-in-one, but the ideas behind the programming were sound: feature a new work that builds upon company traditions (Gemma Bond’s “La Boutique”), push the dancers in a different style by a hot choreographer (Kyle Abraham’s “Mercurial Son”), and show off the troupe’s prodigious technical chops in a grand manner (Harald Lander’s “É tudes”).
PlusFeatured Reads
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.
Plus
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...
Plus
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).
Plus
Of Dandelions and Resilience
Zvidance premiered its new work “Dandelion” mid-November at New York Live Arts. Founded by Zvi Gotheiner in 1989, Zvidance has been a steady presence in the New York contemporary dance scene, a reliable source of compositional integrity, and a magnet for wonderful dancers.
Plus
The Music Within
Cleveland native Dianne McIntrye received a hometown hero's welcome during her curtain speech prior to her eponymous dance group thrilling the audience in her latest work, “In the Same Tongue.”
Plus