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Ballet for Life
REVIEWS | Par Veronica Posth

Ballet for Life

Kyiv-born Iana Salenko, a principal dancer at the Staatsballett Berlin, together with Oleksandr Shpak created their second benefit gala to support humanitarian projects in Ukraine, especially for children. “We'll keep at it,” Salenko had promised after the overwhelming success of the first “Ballet for Life” in 2022. “The suffering and death in Ukraine continue, day after day, night after night. Again and again, children are the victims of war, and the numbers are growing,” says Salenko.

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Tapping into History
REVIEWS | Par Cecilia Whalen

Tapping into History

We hear the dancers before we see them, and that's the point: “Not to watch, but to listen to,” the recorded voice of “Baby” Laurence Jackson instructs. We hear fluttering then see furious tapping as the curtain rises on “Hoofer's Memory Lab,” which opened New York City Center's latest “Artists at the Center” program curated by Ayodele Casel.

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Starry Night
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

Starry Night

As someone who did time in the jazz and tap competition circuit and then Regional Dance America festivals, I was curious to see the Gala performance for the Youth American Grand Prix, which has become one of the biggest dance competitions in the world. The YAGP, in its 24th year, holds annual events in 30 American cities and 15 international ones, giving out half a million dollars in scholarships. I’ve recently covered the more conventional pathways to a dance career: junior troupes and institutional workshops. The YAGP provides yet another route to professional employment, particularly for students who reside outside...

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An Intimate Ballet Blanc
REVIEWS | Par Madelyn Coupe

An Intimate Ballet Blanc

Adapting to unforeseen circumstances has become a common occurrence for Queensland Ballet in recent years. Not only has the pandemic tested the company’s ability to adjust to change, but so too has extreme and catastrophic weather. “Giselle” was slated to return to the stage last year, for the first time in a decade. Yet, a few weeks out from opening night, a devastating announcement came—Queensland Ballet had to cancel their season due to the damages inflicted by recent floods, and the company’s ability to perform “Giselle” was swiftly washed down the storm drain. Thankfully, however, there was a silver lining....

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Stella A Trois
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

Stella A Trois

Tennessee Williams' most spiky love triangle, the ultimate study in late 1940s Southern American melodrama, is an interesting piece to adapt in the twenty-first century. Tackling issues around abuse, class and consent would undoubtedly be a challenge for any dance company. To that end, Scottish Ballet brought in an intimacy coach—ensuring all of the dancers feel comfortable, dealing with portraying the darker themes of sexual violence, addiction, suicide and domestic violence.

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When Beauty Awoke
REVIEWS | MARINA HARSS

When Beauty Awoke

How many ways to think about “Sleeping Beauty”? In the first written Italian and French versions, the plots outline the fate of a young girl as the object of family jealousy, trickery and, after being drugged asleep, ravishment. By the mid-19th century, the Brothers Grimm toned down the storyline, romanticized and adapted it as a story fit for children. Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Tchaikovsky, and Marius Petipa’s 1890 landmark ballet further refashioned it. But another few generations of scholarly research recognized the darker undertones and representations of girls in the fairy tale tradition. Apart from handsome swains or huntsmen who save damsels like...

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Rainbow After
REVIEWS | MARINA HARSS

Rainbow After

In a world in the midst of war, emerging from its post-pandemic slumber, themes and acts of unity, contact and harmony are more than welcome. The differences that make us human are also, dichotomously, the magic that brings us closer together. The subtle nuances of language, the freckles on your skin, the color and glorious hues of your eyes, the food you eat and the mannerisms and peculiarities that identify you as you, are the uncompromising glue that holds us together.

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Stabat Mater
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Howard

Stabat Mater

It’s a bit shocking to see un-ironically religious art onstage in our age, and all the more so as Lent turns a corner toward Holy Week. The world premiere of Jessica Lang’s “Let Me Mingle Tears with Thee” at Pacific Northwest Ballet was not timed to the church calendar, though. Lang has been working with Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater,” from 1736, for at least a decade, with ever deepening responsiveness. Her latest visual manifestation of this score for harpsichord, strings, and two voices capped a winner of a mixed bill that also unveiled a world premiere by Alejandro Cerrudo, in a...

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When Dreams Come True
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Howard

When Dreams Come True

San Francisco Ballet is riding high this season, cruising onward from a new works festival that yielded some real keepers; a “Giselle” freshly energized by new artistic director Tamara Rojo’s coaching; and a mixed bill that scored a hit with the stage premiere of Myles Thatcher’s youthful “Colorforms.” Recently retired artistic director Helgi Tomasson handled all this programming before he stepped down, and it was surely smart of him, box-office-wise, to schedule Christopher Wheeldon’s family friendly “Cinderella” to coincide with spring break. A packed Wednesday night house was clearly delighted by the whole spectacle. I regret, then, to confess an...

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Smooth as Silk, Strong as Steel
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Smooth as Silk, Strong as Steel

The style Kyle Abraham has honed over the years is unmistakable: a silken coordination of the body in which ripples and undulations pass through skin and sinew; an expressive use of the back; hands that touch, and really feel; impulses that start here but find their way there, and then there; a deep sensitivity to music coupled with an intelligent response to lyrics; a penchant for melancholy, leavened with sass. Abraham has a way of revealing his dancers to us without depriving them of mystery or coolness; he builds an atmosphere of intimacy, but something is held in reserve.

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Northern Exposure
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Northern Exposure

The good news is that companies are touring again. It seems like an age since New York received regular visits from large troupes from Europe and Russia. Seeing the National Ballet of Canada at City Center this weekend, back in the city for its first visit since 2016, brought home just how much the world has changed, and not for the better, in the last few years, through a global pandemic and, now, a shattering war that has divided the world into two camps.

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March Gladness
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

March Gladness

I’ve long been preoccupied with the blurry boundary between arts and sports. To my mind, the Rose Adagio balances in “Sleeping Beauty” and Odile’s 32 fouettés in “Swan Lake” are akin to the triple axels in figure skating competitions. It was fitting, then, that Ailey II’s New York Season, which opened last week at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, fell during March Madness. As anyone with a busted bracket knows—and that’s most people this year—stats and seeds can amount to nothing in that wild window that is a live performance.  Oddly enough, most young dancers get very little performance experience until...

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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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