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All that Glitters
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Howard

All that Glitters

This return of Miami City Ballet felt like lifting the curtain on a new, wide-open moment. Fifteen years have passed since MCB last visited Berkeley’s Cal Performances; ten years have passed since MCB founding artistic director Edward Villella stepped down. The world is now post-covid (sort of), and the dance world is post-leadership changes at its Balanchine bastion, New York City Ballet. And so, we Californians had a clean stage for seeing what Lourdes Lopez has done with Miami’s Balanchine legacy over her decade of helming the 52-member troupe. What a refreshing view it was.

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Elegiac in Seattle
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Elegiac in Seattle

“Do you feel you’ve changed as an artist?” Peter Boal, the artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet asked the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky at a pre-performance talk here in Seattle recently. The two men had been discussing Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the country in which Ratmansky spent his early years, and where his parents still live. Ratmansky hesitated, then responded, “I’m definitely changed as a person.” Earlier he had said that he had never considered himself a political artist. Asked what that phrase, political artist, meant to him, he demurred. “I’m not sure yet.”

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Glass Etudes
REVIEWS | Par Karen Hildebrand

Glass Etudes

A three-quarter-mile stroll through grounds once devoted to horses led audience members, toting lawn chairs and picnic fare, to a broad meadow set with an outdoor stage, gleaming grand piano perched atop, purple shades of the Catskill range visible in the distance. The late summer day could not have been more perfect for the opening of Kaatsbaan Cultural Park’s Fall Festival 2022 in Tivoli, NY, where “The Glass Etudes at Kaatsbaan Celebrating Philip Glass’s 85th Birthday” was performed by five piano artists and five sets of choreographers and dancers as the sun set over an idyllic Hudson Valley.

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Future Tense
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

Future Tense

The aesthetic is clear: a laboratory, all clean, ergonomic surfaces and clinical shiny spaces. Like any future focusing corporation, this is full of smiley, benign worker ants in preppy, GAP like workwear. But this is no prosaic company—this is Nu Life,  run by the sinister, megolamaniacal Dr Coppelius. Prototypes of a new doll litter the workspace: arms, heads and swipable screens, where a sex doll—very reminiscent of cinematic babes a la Metropolis, The Fifth Element  or Akira are being produced, en masse. Welcome to a clone for the dystopian tomorrow we've been warned about.

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Imperfect Recollection
REVIEWS | Par Madelyn Coupe

Imperfect Recollection

Australasian Dance Collective revived their sold-out production of “Aftermath” for Brisbane Festival—the city’s annual multi-arts festival that runs for the month of September. Created by Amy Hollingsworth and Jack Lister, the production was a collaboration performed by the company to the score composed by vocalist and songwriter Danny Harley of the Kite String Tangle. One part electric-synth concert, two parts sensory exploration, “Aftermath” hooked the audience from the first explosion of light and didn’t let go until it had said all it needed to say.

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Fold In, Over
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Fold In, Over

Last night, in the Upstairs Studio of Dancehouse, Emily Bowman and Joey Lehrer performing as [ two for now ] became an ocean conveyor belt in “Weathering.” ‘You be the warm shallow current, and I’ll be the cold and salty deep current,’ Bowman might have said to Lehrer before they ran in a clockwise direction. ‘Together, we’ll feel what it is like to be an ocean gyre in the Northern Hemisphere. We’ll run in a spiral like the currents formed by wind patterns and forces created by the Earth in rotation.’ Together, a thermohaline circulation was revealed. Together, [ two...

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Ballet West in the Garden
REVIEWS | Par Sophie Bress

Ballet West in the Garden

There’s something about an outdoor venue that fills a performance with possibility, ease, and the right energy for change and open mindedness. Maybe it’s the open air—which pops the confines of the proscenium like a bubble—that creates a place where dance-goers can relax: stretching out on a blanket, feeling their toes in the grass and the sun on their skin.

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You Just Had to be There
REVIEWS | Par Emily May

You Just Had to be There

I have to admit, I’ve been putting off writing this review for quite a while. I’ve tried multiple times, but each attempt has only resulted in me staring at the blank, white expanse of my Google document, failing to figure out how to put the experience of watching American choreographer Faye Driscoll’s “Thank You For Coming: Space” into words. Even straight after the show, its intense absurdity still fresh in my mind, I had to try very hard to refrain from resorting to the phrase no critic should ever use—“you just had to be there”—when my boyfriend asked me what...

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Forces of Nature
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Forces of Nature

Explicit content may refer to a parental advisory warning label used by the music industry, but add an ‘s’ to ‘content’ and it is more likely that the explicit contents choreographer Rhiannon Newton is referring to come from the physical act of unfurling something to reveal what lies within.

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United in Intention, Individual in Execution
REVIEWS | Par Emily May

United in Intention, Individual in Execution

With the house lights still raised, renowned American dancer and choreographer Trajal Harrell stands downstage left, just across from two lines of slick, black piano stools. Wearing a white shirt and black trousers, as well as a frilly, floral dress that is hung around his neck, Harrell waits calmly and patiently as audience members clumsily try to find their allotted seats, smiling and nodding at people who catch his eye. At one point, he reaches into his pocket and grabs a tissue to wipe some sweat off his nose.

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Poetry and Pain
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

Poetry and Pain

Alan Cumming has never been one for half measures—whether taking on the iconic Emcee in “Cabaret” in 1993, garnering him a Tony award, Dionysus in a gospel tinged version of “The Bacchae,” or portraying every single role in his much acclaimed, raw and visceral one man Macbeth in 2012 (an absolute triumph of ambition and ideas.)

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This Just In
REVIEWS | Par Victoria Looseleaf

This Just In

After the pandemic shutdown, it felt so good to be back in REDCAT’s beautiful black box space for its annual three-week New Original Works Festival (NOW). Currently in its 19th edition—a feat in and of itself, the theater having opened in 2003—the celebrated series features nine premieres by some of Los Angeles’ foremost dance, theater, music and multimedia artists.

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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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