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Dear Diary
REVIEWS | Par Karen Hildebrand

Dear Diary

When the inclination is to create, as the award-winning choreographer Amy Seiwert says, “the most brilliant thing that anyone’s ever seen,” what happens when you’re given permission to be less than perfect? This is one question the Michael Smuin protégée who went on to direct the Sacramento Ballet for two seasons is asking with her innovative series, Sketch. For the project’s twelfth iteration, Seiwert invited Natasha Adorlee, formerly of ODC/Dance and Robert Moses’ Kin; and rising star, Joshua L. Peugh, founder of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, to join her with a group of eight stellar dance artists to create new works...

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An Interplay of Shadow and Light
REVIEWS | Par Madelyn Coupe

An Interplay of Shadow and Light

Australasian Dance Collective finally presented its second iteration of the triple bill “Three” to a very eager audience. Originally slated to be performed back in February, the Brisbane floods caused the production to be halted in its tracks. Mid-tech rehearsal everything stopped—the dancers were evacuated, the theatre flooded, and people patiently waited to hear about the future of “Three.” Thankfully, nearly five months later, the production was staged in all its sensory splendour, and audiences flocked to the theatre to support the three new Australian works.

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Resplendently human
REVIEWS | Par Sophie Bress

Resplendently human

Even despite countless efforts not to, the concert dance world can feel inaccessible. At its most avant-garde, the form can come off as niche, esoteric, and difficult to understand, especially to those without a background in it. Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love,” turns all these assumptions on their head.

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Sharing stories, past and present
REVIEWS | Par Sophie Bress

Sharing stories, past and present

A single dancer commands the stage, her arms and legs lithely carving the space as the words of Gloria Anzaldúa’s poem “To Live In The Borderlands Means You,” simultaneously sculpt the air. A ballerina’s nimble fingertips etch lines in the sky as she dances with her partner in an ethereal, heart-wrenching pas de deux. Men in intricately embroidered jackets tap out a percussive and precise zapateado. Women in brightly colored skirts move together with force, muskets in hand. Ballet Nepantla’s “Valentina,” which was presented in an abridged version on July 13 at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Henry J. Leir Outdoor...

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Love’s Transgression
REVIEWS | Par Marina Harss

Love’s Transgression

In a season dominated by old standbys, Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” stands out as one of American Ballet Theatre’s most evergreen. The production fits the company like an old glove, perhaps not as sleek as it once was, but still handsome and well made. The pas de deux—around which the ballet is built—have ingrained themselves in the audience’s collective consciousness. Everyone knows what comes next. Their steps melt into waves, that is, until the moments in which Romeo holds Juliet aloft, or the two dancers face each other in total stillness, barely touching. As if on cue, the audience...

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A Pretty Picaresque
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

A Pretty Picaresque

Big leaps, big smiles, big energy—Carlos Acosta’s new “Don Quixote” for Birmingham Royal Ballet does its darndest to capture the larger-than-life spirit of Petipa’s nineteenth-century classic. There are glittering costumes, merry character dances, silk fans swizzling, flamenco-style. There’s no runaway windmill, like in the 2013 version Acosta mounted for the Royal Ballet, but Tim Hatley’s starburst stage design sports its own wow factors, including a luscious velveteen colour palette.

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Take a Seat
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Howard

Take a Seat

A healthy-sized crowd swarmed ODC Theater’s lobby for SFDanceworks’ closing matinee in the Mission District, and word from the box office was that attendance the previous nights had been robust. This was happy news for San Francisco dance fans who appreciate a Nederlands Dans Theater-esque aesthetic: sleek, spine-roiling movement, virtuosic in balletic ways yet weighted, often set to contemporary music with a tinge of the ominous and intellectual.

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Dance for Thought
REVIEWS | Par Ilena Peng

Dance for Thought

The Metropolitan Opera stage, awash in harsh lights and a roughly patterned backdrop, almost felt industrial when the curtain rose on Alonzo King’s “Single Eye.” But as dancers appeared in pale aqua velvet leotards, the stage softened. Then, it began to feel more vulnerable and intimate, as principal dancers Christine Shevchenko and Thomas Forster performed a pas de deux full of gorgeously fluid movements between geometrical positions.

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Three Afternoons at “Swan Lake”
REVIEWS | Par Ilena Peng

Three Afternoons at “Swan Lake”

A ballet as famed and often performed as “Swan Lake” comes with both high expectations and the risk of losing its lustre, making it both a rite of passage and a continuing challenge for dancers at all points of their careers. Audiences were able to see both in action in American Ballet Theatre’s recent 12-show run of “Swan Lake,” where dancers both debuted and revisited the iconic roles of Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried.

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Spirit of Rebellion
REVIEWS | Par Candice Thompson

Spirit of Rebellion

Sometimes a work of art can be compelling for its strict adherence to the rules of a given form, for the comfort and beauty that can be found in a virtuosity we already know how to gauge. Classical ballet is rife with examples of this sort. Other times, a spirit of rebellion or failure to conform can provide a kind of satisfying spaciousness—an atmosphere in which we are dazzled not just by what our eyes are seeing but by what we might imagine going forward. On Thursday, June 30th, 2022, at the Joyce Theater, Christopher Williams Dances had moments of...

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A Continuation
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

A Continuation

Returning to Dancehouse’s Sylvia Staehli Theatre for Week Two of the Keir Choreographic Award, let us begin at the end. In a live cross to Carriageworks, Sydney, the 2022 KCA international jury, Daniel Riley (Wiradjuri/Australia), Eko Supriyanto (Indonesia), Laurie Uprichard (Ireland), Lemi Ponifasio (Aotearoa/New Zealand), and Nanako Nakajima (Japan), awards the $50,000 Keir Choreographic Award to Tra Mi Dinh for her questioning of what really is an ending in her work “The ___”.

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Redrawing the Map
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Redrawing the Map

Desolate. Exuberant. What do we do now? We dance, of course. From a callout in November, 2021, eight applicants were selected to develop a work of up to 20-minutes in a five-month period (February to June) in 2022, for the fifth edition of the biennial Keir Choreographic Award (KCA). The eight commissioned works included Alan Schacher and WeiZen Ho, Tra Mi Dinh, Alice Will Caroline, and Jenni Large, in Week One at Dancehouse, Melbourne. With Lucky Lartey, Rebecca Jensen, Joshua Pether, and Raghav Handa to follow in Week Two, at the culmination of which, the $50,000 prize will be awarded...

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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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