Moved to Tears
Some days, when I find myself spiraling down Twitter’s sewer drain of dystopian disinformation, I contemplate tweeting a stupid joke that goes like this: “I Used to Review Ballet and Now I Tend Chickens: My Pandemic Memoir.”
Plus
Latest
- Tout
- BOOKSHELF
- DANCE FILM
- EVENTS
- FEATURES
- FIELD NOTES
- INTERVIEWS
- OPINION
- OTHER
- PHOTOGRAPHY
- REVIEWS
- TALKING POINTES
Holding Tight
While many smaller American ballet companies hang on month to month through the pandemic to learn the ultimate shape of their fates, other troupes have faced harsh consequences swiftly. Just three months after California’s Covid restrictions, the board of the Sacramento Ballet voted to terminate Amy Seiwert’s tenure as artistic director, and the shifts she’d begun there—away from classical chestnuts and regional-level Balanchine and towards European-influenced new works—ended abruptly. Swiftly, Seiwert announced that she was returning to her project-based company in San Francisco, Imagery, which among other endeavors (and tours to the Joyce Theater Ballet Festival and Jacob’s Pillow) produces...
Plus
Windows on Dance
In a window longer than it is tall, within a white frame, there is a room. A room as a blank canvas. A room as a piece of paper awaiting the first gesture of a drawing. The optical illusion of this window through to a room held within a white frame makes the information it holds appear three-dimensional: my eye registers a room and the white frame becomes a flat two-dimensional screen, on my computer screen, by comparison.
Plus
A Royal Affair
The dance scene throughout the pandemic has largely consisted of old, recorded performances being posted online. These videos have their merits, but also many limitations. The Royal Ballet boldly tried something different last week. The entire troupe managed to gather safely to put on a gala broadcast live over the internet. Anyone with wifi could purchase a sixteen pound ticket and watch from home, with access to a recording of the performance through November 8th.
Plus
The Future is Unwritten
Based in Glasgow, and recently celebrating three years since they formed, Project X have a strong aesthetic and highly prolific output with a focus on history, culture and the lived experience of the African and Caribbean Diaspora. These two brand new short films from the multi-disciplinary company, screening as part of Black History Month, take on a female perspective. Both films rejoice in sisterhood and a strong sense of selfhood, both are beautiful celebrations of black women, and feel powerful and moving in distinct ways.
Plus
Lockdown Anxieties Laid Bare
Lockdown has seen a major uptick in dance on screen, although much of what’s streaming is old runs and historic films; brand-new work has been harder to come by. This triple bill includes premieres from three UK companies, all devised in response to the pandemic. Produced by the Lawrence Batley Theatre, the works are filmed in and around this Huddersfield venue, and lean into the themes we’ve come to associate with life after Covid: isolation, disruption, and shifting perspectives on freedom and responsibility.
Plus
Another Fall Season
Fall is here, and the New York City Ballet embarked upon a new season on Tuesday night. Business as usual—except for the fact that I watched it on Wednesday morning. The dance scene in New York will remain virtual for the foreseeable future, alas. But there was great comfort in the fact that City Ballet could still offer an All-Balanchine program to commence its calendar year. The company’s fall season generally begins with a strong return to roots after the lengthy summer hiatus. I so look forward to seeing pristine executions of the Black & Whites, or a slate-clearing “Serenade,”...
Plus
Flower of the Season
Now, it seems, more than ever, do we need art. And while Covid continues its assault on a huge swath of our population, relief came to this reviewer in the form of a live-streamed concert by butoh master Oguri. Bringing laser-like intensity to each and every performance while simultaneously creating portraits of staggering resilience, this supreme mover continues to surprise, stun and satisfy with his dances, whether solo or in conjunction with others.
Plus
Spilled Ink
There is a global and personal story behind “Ink,” the new creation by Dimitris Papaioannou that premiered in September in Turin, Italy. Just before the European lockdown, the Greek artist was working on his new creation (still untitled): a piece for seven performers which was supposed to debut on the 6th of May at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, an international co-production involving thirteen main institutions, among them the Avignon festival, Lyon Dance Biennial, London Sadler’s Wells, Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville, Napoli Teatro Festival.
Plus
An Eternal Giselle
When German poet Heinrich Heine wrote De l’Allemagne (“On Germany”), which was published in Paris in 1835, he couldn’t have imagined that two short paragraphs from his book, where he so evocatively and vividly described an ancient Slavic legend of the Wilis, betrothed young maidens who perished before their wedding day, would inspire “Giselle”—one of the most enduring and popular ballets ever made—the quintessential Romantic-era classic.
Plus
Daring and Destiny
When Alexei Ratmansky was commissioned to create a new version of “Cinderella” for the Mariinsky Ballet, in 2002, he was an up-and-coming choreographer, virtually unknown in the West. In Russia, however, he was already regarded as a promising talent and a new hope.
Plus
New [digital] Ghosts
What was live, I can pause, and it occurs to me that not being able to conveniently pause a live performance was one of the things I most enjoyed about it. It was live. It is live. It was/is roaring along, independent of my will. And in having no control over any part of its trajectory, I disappeared completely, in the best possible sense. I wasn’t me in the theatre or hall, but a series of notes, a flurry of limbs, a lightness, an extension, particles illuminated by stage lighting; anything. In this freedom, a different kind of pause. A...
PlusFeatured Reads
Teenage Angst and Institutions
Watching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...
Plus
The Me of Today
The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
Plus
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.
Plus
America, F**K Yeah
After a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.
Plus
Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup
An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
Plus