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Gram Technique
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

Gram Technique

If you thought Akram Khan’s 2016 update of “Giselle”—which resituated the 1841 classic to apply to modern migrant workers in a haunted garment factory—was radical, you should see Joshua Beamish’s 2019 “@giselle,” which takes place almost entirely over social media. I should clarify. This is not an online viewing situation, one watches “@giselle” in-person at an actual theater. (To be specific: the NY premiere of “@giselle” was held at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.) But projections of Instagram-esque formatting, by Brianna Amore, were cast onto a scrim and framed nearly every scene. The flesh-and-blood performers danced...

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Do Not Go Gently
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Do Not Go Gently

The South African contemporary choreographer Dada Masilo, based at Johannesburg’s The Dance Factory, has re-imagined some of the most familiar works in the western canon, including “Giselle” and “Swan Lake,” through an African lens. In “The Sacrifice,” she takes a juggernaut of early 20th century modernism, “The Rite of Spring.” But it is more complicated than that; as Masilo writes in her program note, she is responding not to Nijinsky and Stravinsky but to Pina Bausch, whose punishing 1975 “Rite of Spring” for the Paris Opéra is a juggernaut of its own. (Bausch’s work comes to the Park Avenue Armory...

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Leaps and Bounds
REVIEWS | Par Karen Greenspan

Leaps and Bounds

Since receiving a transformative financial infusion in 2020, Gibney Company has been charging forward at a dizzying pace. The company, led by founder and artistic director Gina Gibney and company director Gilbert T. Small II, has doubled its roster of dancers while it voraciously acquires and commissions challenging works, rolls out two annual seasons in New York, and tours nationally and abroad. For its NYC spring season at the Joyce, Gibney presented a program of works by three distinct choreographers. Whether in the studio or on stage, the thirteen Gibney artistic associates are an immensely capable and technically versatile group...

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Re-Emergence
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Howard

Re-Emergence

Most mid-size US ballet troupes went through a thing or two during the pandemic, of course, but Sacramento Ballet’s passage was especially rough. When Covid hit, the troupe was just settling in with new artistic director Amy Seiwert after a bitter struggle between the board and the company’s longtime leaders, Ron Cunningham and Carinne Binda. Seiwert was then abruptly let go, for reasons the board would not comment on. Anthony Krutzkamp, a former Cincinnati Ballet dancer who had been serving as executive director, took her place.

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Timeless
REVIEWS | Par Cecilia Whalen

Timeless

Trisha Brown said her conversations with former French Minister of Culture Michel Guy occurred “outside of time.” Brown and Guy, who was the founder of the avant-garde international Festival d'Automne, would sit for hours discussing dance and art. Brown said during those discussion, Guy would have to adjust the blinds more than once to accommodate the changes in daylight.

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The Power of Three
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

The Power of Three

On one of the strongest lineups of the spring season, the New York City Ballet bookended Balanchine’s 1957 masterpiece, “Agon,” with the first and last ballets choreographed by Jerome Robbins: “Fancy Free” (1944) and “Brandenburg” (1997). “Fancy,” a theatrical Fleet Week farce, is starting to show its age. Though some tonal tweaks have been made, the scene in which the trio of sailors steals a woman’s red purse and playfully yanks her around doesn’t get the laughs it used to. Running concurrently across the plaza at the Met this month, coincidentally, is the powerful new opera “Champion.” It also has...

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With Diamonds
REVIEWS | Par Madelyn Coupe

With Diamonds

Science fiction met real-time emotional animation in Australasian Dance Collective’s “Lucie in the Sky.” When the company released news of this work, there was resounding excitement—bold, pioneering, and arguably the most ambitious artistic choice ADC has made to date. From the outset, one question hovered over “Lucie in the Sky:” can we, as artists, anthropomorphise objects using choreography and spatial empathy to elicit an emotional response from our audience? A question that was answered with three words: emotionally coded drones.

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Entrances and Exits
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Entrances and Exits

The Indian dance company Nrityagram, which specializes in the East Indian dance form Odissi, has been a frequent visitor to New York since the nineties. Each visit has been revelatory in some way. For years that revelatory quality seemed intimately linked to the choreographic relationship between the company’s director and choreographer, Surupa Sen, and its main star, Bijayini Satpathy. The two have performed solos and duets of breathtaking beauty and complexity during which time seemed to stop, and the audience tried not to blink for fear of missing something.

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She Sang the Body Electric
REVIEWS | Par Merilyn Jackson

She Sang the Body Electric

All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female. “I Sing The Body Electric” - Walt Whitman

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Reframing American Cinema
REVIEWS | Par Cecilia Whalen

Reframing American Cinema

The set is a mid-century living room. A green lamp and a bookcase rest downstage right; a typewriter and an abacus lie upstage on a desk. Cushioned chairs sit invitingly among scattered suitcases which are stuffed to the brim, and a single wooden chair sits center. This is the opening shot of Kayla Farrish's “Put Away the Fire, dear, pt. 2,” a second draft to the dancer/choreographer's exploration of American film and archetypes, which was presented as part of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival in the lower east side.

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Returning Home
REVIEWS | Par Josephine Minhinnett

Returning Home

Frigid waterfalls. Fog rising in the grey of morning. Dense forest yielding to expansive lakes. These are some of the landscapes in Santee Smith's latest production “Homelands” for Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, which premiered at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. Smith is Kahnyen’kehàka/Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River territory in southern Canada and since 2005, she has built her company on a repertoire of innovative multimedia and contemporary dance productions that bring Indigenous experiences and Onkwehón:we worldviews to the stage.

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Verklärte Gala
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

Verklärte Gala

Without a program, I would have confused the two premieres at the New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala. With its geometric arm motifs, calculated group patterns, and tastefully spare retro costumes, I’d have attributed “Standard Deviation” to former resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon instead of newcomer Alysa Pires. It seemed like an outgrowth of Wheeldon’s “Mercurial Manoeuvres,” from 2000. But Wheeldon’s influence could also be felt in the energetic, shifting corps patterns of Justin Peck’s “The Times Are Racing” closer too. In fact, his presence was more palpable in these than in his own piece, “From You Within Me,” a dance...

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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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