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Dreamy Episodes
REVIEWS | Par Candice Thompson

Dreamy Episodes

Evoking its title, Tere O’Connor’s “Rivulets” trickled through a series of dreamy episodes where movement, music, and gathering collided with a quieter sense of interiority. The world premiere at Baryshnikov Arts Center on Wednesday evening was an unfussy affair, staged in a studio with a light grid and a few rows of seating on either side of the floor. Without a discernible plot or recognizable story, the dancers communicated with one another in streams of expressive and at times, exhausting, choreography (to which they received collaborative credit).

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Daring Dances
REVIEWS | Par Merilyn Jackson

Daring Dances

Although audience members shivered in the first cold night as they entered one of Philadelphia’s finest downtown performance palaces, the Wilma Theater, Ballet X offered them a program of warm memories, thoughtful reflections and a touch of nostalgia on November 30.

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Elvis Sighting at the Joyce
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

Elvis Sighting at the Joyce

Dwight Rhoden might be the only person in the world who likes a high leg as much as I do, so I have a fondness for his work. Wacked-out extensions are the defining feature of the troupe he co-directs with Desmond Richardson, the Complexions Contemporary Ballet. But aside from this undeviating, extreme pliancy, the Complexions roster is one of the most diverse groups working today in terms of race and gender, and especially size and shape. There’s Jillian Davis, who towers even on flat, at 6’2”, and whose powerful, shapely legs could’ve used a bigger stage. And then there’s Vincenzo Di...

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Old Love, New Love
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Old Love, New Love

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is once again ensconced New York City Center for its annual December season. The programs offer the usual mix of dances by Ailey, pieces by twentieth-century masters—which this year include Twyla Tharp’s “Roy’s Joys”—and new works commissioned from contemporary choreographers. And, of course, “Revelations.” At a recent performance, the patron behind me sighed unhappily upon hearing that Ailey’s 1960 masterpiece was not on the program.

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Mad World
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Mad World

What is it about Emanuel Gat’s “Lovetrain2020” that is so captivating? The piece, which came to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week, is set to songs by the emo-electronica band Tears for Fears, and that is certainly part of its charm, at least for members of my generation (Generation X), which, let’s face it, constitutes a significant portion of BAM’s audience. But it’s hardly one of those jukebox medleys that basks in the beats of a previous era. Nostalgia is part, but not all, of the story.

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Seasons' Canon
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Howard

Seasons' Canon

I woke this morning realizing I had dreamt extensively about Crystal Pite’s “The Seasons’ Canon,” and I’d wager that anyone who saw the work on the second repertory program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 50th anniversary season in Seattle is still dreaming about it, too. Even viewed on screen as a digital stream, which I settled for as a distant admirer of the company (thank you, PNB, for extending your pandemic video options!), this 54-dancer spectacle leaves lingering questions. Whether those questions lead to the kind of contemplation we seek from art or send us spinning in surface ruminations is another...

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Dantesque
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Dantesque

Everyone knows that Sarasota Ballet is Frederick Ashton’s unlikely home-away-from-home, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Or not so unlikely, given that it is directed by Iain Webb and his wife Margaret Barbieri, both of whom danced for the Royal Ballet in London. Barbieri, in particular, worked directly with Ashton, as well as with Kenneth MacMillan, whose ballets are also performed here. The company’s second repertory program of the 2022-2023 comprised works by both, including two early ballets seldom seen anywhere. Each is a curiosity.

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Flora, Fauna, and Flesh
REVIEWS | Par Candice Thompson

Flora, Fauna, and Flesh

On the evening of Tuesday November 8th, 2022, I was not up for a night out. An existential dread, induced by the U.S. midterm elections, had finally caught up with me as I was walking up to Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater. A friend texted me a list of soothing cures which included plunging your face into a bowl of ice water for 15-30 seconds. A little over an hour later, I added another item to that mood-lifting list: Lia Rodrigues’s “Encantado.”

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Extending the Limits
REVIEWS | Par Cecilia Whalen

Extending the Limits

Dimitris Papaioannou's “Transverse Orientation” starts with a joke: Entering from a single door in a blank white wall, several tall, pin-headed figures rush onstage with ladders. Dressed in all black, they skitter towards a lone, flickering fluorescent light. How many of the faceless shadow people does it take to change a lightbulb? They put their shrunken heads together to find out.

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Taylor Revamped
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

Taylor Revamped

This November, the Paul Taylor Dance Company returned to the Koch Theater for the first time since 2019 under the tagline “Taylor: A New Era.” They’ve had a rough go of it since 2018, when Taylor passed away, at age 88, months after handing the reins over to former company member Michael Novak. Then, just as the troupe was restructuring after the loss of its founder, a pesky virus you may have heard of set them back again. But now, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of so very many brushfires, they have emerged on the other side with...

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Haunting Hospitality
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

Haunting Hospitality

Dramatic set designs and sweeping contemporary ballet combine in this mixed bill from Birmingham Royal Ballet, which pieces together three new additions to BRB’s rep, each with a live orchestral score. Jiří Kylián’s “Forgotten Land,” created on the Stuttgart Ballet in the 80s, sends six couples wafting through the wilds of Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem, while Uwe Scholz marshals the stateliness of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony in a like-titled ensemble ballet from 1990. The hardest-hitting piece, “Hotel,” a new commission from Morgann Runacre-Temple, isn’t as musically driven as its companions, though Mikael Karlsson’s score slickly informs its eerie mood. Either...

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Migrations
REVIEWS | Par Karen Hildebrand

Migrations

Not all the reasons to celebrate Zvi Gotheiner’s newest work were immediately visible as the company of seven dancers took to the black box stage at New York Live Arts last week. “Migrations” is the first work Gotheiner has made since suffering a stroke in March 2021. That he is able to choreograph at this stage of his healing process is a credit to his dancers, including associate artistic director Doron Perk, and other longtime collaborators. Also, the announcement that Gotheiner’s long-running Maggie Black inspired ballet class has returned in person to City Center is welcome news to many who...

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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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