Shakespearean Twist
It’s a drag to report that I had the urge to walk out of my first performance back in NYC after a long summer break.
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World-class review of ballet and dance.
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 Beauty or Red Riding Hood from stepmothers or disfigured crones, the producers of even the most treasured classics should take some measure of the plight of characters, even if fantasy.
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It’s a drag to report that I had the urge to walk out of my first performance back in NYC after a long summer break.
PlusThings seem to be clicking in place for Mamela Nyamza. Her latest work “The Herd/Less” is touring the world while her recognition as a choreographer with a distinction for the subversive and political has earned her a Silver Lion for dance at the Venice Biennale.
PlusAfter taking a field trip in the second grade to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ronald K. Brown was inspired to take his first dance class at Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a Brooklyn-based community center.
PlusAs much as it is a cliché to reference, there is something special in finding a work that so aptly fits that famous quote from George Balanchine: “See the music. Hear the dance.”
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