World-class review of ballet and dance.
The late rock icon Jimi Hendrix would have approved: Cool “purple haze”—as well as hot crimsons and other miasmas of color emanating from Ligia Lewis’ tour de force work from 2016, “minor matter”—proved mind-altering both visually and viscerally. Programmed as part of the Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, the dance won a 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production and is the second part of Lewis’ trilogy, “Blue Red White.”
Plus
Not often does a production flow so seamlessly that a viewer can legitimately forget that the scenes unfolding onstage are live, and not simply a three-dimensional animation playing for the hundredth perfect cycle. Yet in the case of Shanghai Dance Theatre’s balletic dance drama “Soaring Wings: Story of the Crested Ibis,” the audience is indeed swept away to this heightened level of fantasy, in thanks not only to its imaginative sets, lighting, and costuming, but through the joyous expressiveness of its performers as well.
Plus
“It always wants something more of me,” Belinda McGuire said to me with a wry smile a few days before the opening of her solo performance, “Waltz Slaughterhouse Requiem.” Something true of dance, I thought, and perhaps especially true for solo work. McGuire's performance of her own choreography, a personal reflection, “Slaughterhouse/Requiem” was highly original and impressive, and is one of my highlights of the year in dance.
Plus
Sturm und Drang—2017 saw the dance world roiling with it, both on and off the stage. Israel’s culture minister hit the headlines for refusing arts funding to performances involving nudity; Palestinian-Syrian refugee Ahmad Joudeh made a prominent debut with the Dutch National Ballet after fleeing death threats from Islamic State; discord boiled over in Moscow as Kirill Serebrennikov, the director of the Bolshoi’s long-awaited “Nureyev” was placed under house arrest on what many suspect are trumped-up charges intended to punish him for celebrating the life of a gay man on stage—a conspicuous challenge to Putin’s ban on so-called ‘homosexual propaganda.’...
Plus
If ever there were a time when art was needed, this is it. The year that began—and continues to this day—with a Twitter-happy and some would say, deranged lunatic sitting in the Oval Office could only, at every twist and turn, benefit from the grace, beauty and power of art. That the #MeToo movement has also encompassed wide swaths of politics, Hollywood, journalism and yes—even the dance world—is both emboldening and sad.
Plus
There could be no more auspicious moment for Suzanne Farrell to mark the closure of her ballet company than December 2017. With the New York City Ballet future of her former partner Peter Martins very much in doubt, Farrell sent her dancers out onstage at the Kennedy Center last week to perform works she and Martins had often danced together, works created by the man who cast her out of his company after she rebuffed his proposal.
Plus
There’s something that performer Robert Clark is struggling to articulate. As he muddles through his opening speech in Charlotte Vincent's first all-male work for Vincent Dance Theatre, “Shut Down,” the enormity of the topic he is trying to comprehend becomes apparent. There’s a problem with the image of masculinity—that of the strong, unemotional, alpha male.
Plus
For the second work of its 2017 fall season, BalletX returned to the newly spruced up Wilma Theater with a reprise of a 2013 commission to internationally in demand choreographer, Nicolo Fonte’s “Beautiful Decay.” Two sets of well-known Philadelphia-based guest dancers alternate during the run. On seeing it the first time with Manfred Fischbeck and Brigitta Herrmann, years ago, and this time with Hellmut Fricke-Gottschild and Brenda Dixon Gottschild in the alternate cast, I find the title even more wincingly uncomfortable.
Plus
No matter how many bells, whistles and special effects are deployed in a dance, if the choreography isn’t there, the exercise/event borders on being pointless. To wit: the two-act “Tesseract,” a collaboration between filmmaker Charles Atlas and choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, who happen to be very good movers. That this trio also comes with a first-class pedigree—Atlas served as filmmaker-in-residence for Merce Cunningham for a decade from the early 1970s through 1983, and Mitchell and Riener both danced with the postmodern genius during the troupe’s final years—upped the expectation ante while falling short on its deliverables.
Plus
In 2015 David McAllister, the Australian Ballet’s long time artistic director debuted his first full- length work at the Sydney Opera House: his lavish, and wildly successful, “The Sleeping Beauty.” At the time, the Australian Ballet keenly revealed that more than 70 per cent of the production costs (thought to be in the millions) were raised through 2000-plus philanthropic donations. The financial support was not only obvious, but allowed McAllister’s artistic vision to be fully realized; the stage dripped with beautifully ornate sets, luxurious costumes and intricate detailing—it was a financial and creative success.
Plus
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s death. To celebrate the life and work of the internationally renowned choreographer and former Royal Ballet director, the UK’s leading ballet companies joined together to perform a season of MacMillan’s work.
Plus
Details and the slightest intricacies are key to this showcase of BalletBoyz’ incredible work, displaying their versatility. A hand placed just so, a smile that is hard to read, bodies entwined, in conflict and pushed apart. With an audacious, challenging remit of creating brand new works for the company in just a fortnight, four choreographers bring pieces of delicacy and precision in collaboration with four composers. Balance and power structures is the theme threading through the evening, topped off by a critically acclaimed half hour long piece from 2013 by Russell Maliphant, called “Fallen” (the most balletic in the purest...
PlusWatching 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,...
PlusThe 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.
PlusAfter 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.
PlusAn “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
Plus