World-class review of ballet and dance.
Maurice Béjart would surely have been delighted to see La Seine Musicale’s vast Grande Salle, that striking structure seemingly floating on the river above the Île Seguin, filled for all six March performances of his company’s tour.
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Penn Live Arts presented Rennie Harris’s “Losing My Religion” last week as part of its America Unfinished Series, marking the country’s semiquincentennial.
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A gifted satirist, Jane Comfort’s dance theater productions are razor sharp and wickedly indelible. Take, for instance, the evening length “Beauty” (2012), with its robotic Barbie beauty contest.
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On the first weekend of spring, Japan Society presented multidisciplinary, avant-garde artist Hiroaki Umeda and his dance ensemble Somatic Field Project in an evening-length program of his latest cutting-edge dance works.
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American Ballet Theatre typically holds court in NYC twice a year. Their Summer Season at the Metropolitan Opera House features classical narrative full-lengths, and the Fall Season at the Koch Theater showcases edgier, short-form works.
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Unlikeable humanity in a rapacious society, Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon” hits the zeitgeist—again. Recently staged by the National Ballet of Japan, it’s a stunning testimony to the ballet’s relevance across time and space. Fifty years since its creation and set in eighteenth-century France, the production nevertheless holds a mirror to now.
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An ambitious yet flawed work, “Dis-order,” seen last week at the Skirball Cultural Center, was described in the program notes as a “communal ritual, and a family drama that asks what forces move through us when we enact an ancient spring rite, and what is left unspoken when we gather around the table.”
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Crystal Pite is a connoisseur of the ensemble, with a forte for spotlighting the humanity of the collective, from the tight-knit flock to the anonymised mass.
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Looking down into the rotunda from the spiral ramp of New York’s Guggenheim Museum can be dizzying. My perch tonight is located two-thirds of the way to the top—and it’s the best view in the house for Lucinda Childs’ Early Works program.
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Push and pull are pretty commonplace commands. You can push someone’s buttons, pull someone’s leg. Somehow we always manage to conflate the two when facing a door in a public place.
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The Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory is a yawning, cavernous space. In its depths, even the fiercest applause can be rendered a mere din, sounding hollow and unappreciative.
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Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
PlusIt is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
PlusAs the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
PlusOne of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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