World-class review of ballet and dance.
Crystal Pite’s “Flight Pattern,” created for the Royal Ballet in 2017, was noteworthy not just for its elegant storytelling but also its status as the first female-choreographed ballet to hit Covent Garden’s main stage this century. The half-hour ballet thrived on the power of the collective, marshalling three dozen dancers to tell an urgent chronicle about unity and strife, bodies breathing as one.
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The term, “theater of war,” as defined by the National Command Authorities, is the area of air, land and water that is, or may become, directly involved in the conduct of war. To Jacques Heim, founder, artistic director and choreographer of the 30-year old, Los Angeles-based troupe, Diavolo|Architecture™ in Motion, these words have taken on a literal meaning in the context of art: With veterans performing besides dancers in “S.O.S. – Signs of Strength,” which had its Los Angeles premiere in March and was seen as part of a double bill in Houston over the weekend, the work is searing,...
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LaTasha Barnes was dancing the Lindy Hop before she even knew it. In a 2021 interview with the New York Times, Barnes, who has come to international acclaim for her excellent performances in jazz and hiphop styles, said that the first time she tried Lindy partnering, her body already knew what to do. “I've felt this before,” she said, and, after consulting her grandmother, learned that she had actually been doing those moves since childhood.
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A lot can happen in a handful of days. You can find your Romeo or Juliet. Make a declaration of eternal love. You can be impetuous for nightfall. You can be drawn into a portentous duel in a market place. You can come up against history and a family feud that has little to do with you. You can be sentenced to exile. You can be grief-stricken. It can all end in the Capulet family crypt.
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The Koch Theater was packed to the rafters for the New York City Ballet’s 10th Fall Fashion Gala. The evening’s honoree and mastermind, Sarah Jessica Parker, was unfortunately absent (due to a death in the family), but everyone else sure turned out: the evening raised a record-setting 3.4 million dollars. It was good to see the house stuffed to the fifth ring; the repertory performance I saw the Wednesday prior was a ghost town. I’m guessing the fabulously clad crowd was there for the fashion, but I was most eager to see Kyle Abraham’s new piece. His 2018 entry, “The Runaway,”...
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30 years ago this year, a small independent film, by a first time director, and an unknown cast, hit our screens. That film was Strictly Ballroom. And so, for our final episode of Season 2 of Talking Pointes, I’m speaking with the legendary Paul Mercurio. Paul was born in Swan Hill in regional Victoria and started dancing after he saw his elder sister in a local dance class. With dad off the scene early, the family moved to Perth where Paul continued to train at the John Curtin Senior High School as it was known then, before, at 18, being accepted in the Australian Ballet School in...
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Choreography is often described as a kind of drawing crafted from the materials of time, space, and flesh. In describing “Crowd,” choreographer Gisèle Vienne expands on this idea, likening her work for fifteen dancers taking part in a rave on a stage to “paintings where you have thousands of characters and the details are kind of overwhelming.” The dancers narrate their individual stories kinetically as the piece unfolds like an all night party, their movements modulating between different feelings of time.
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In physics, the motion of a pendulum can be described as: θ(t) = θocos (ωt). In choreography and composition, the motion of a pendulum can also be described as Lucy Guerin and Matthias Schack-Arnott’s “Pendulum: a mesmerising dance with gravity.” In both, the data of time, length, and gravity come together in simple harmonic solution.
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There’s a lot going on in Yvonne Rainer’s “Hellzapoppin’ What about the bees?” performed by eight dance artists and actress Kathleen Chalfant as special guest. A founding member of Judson Dance Theater, writer, and experimental filmmaker, Rainer’s wit and breadth spans several mediums in her newest work. At 87, with two Guggenheims and the MacArthur Fellowship under her belt, Rainer claims this show is her finale.
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“Mayerling,” Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s 1978 ballet about Austria’s Crown Prince Rudolf, is steeped in death. The show is bookended by funeral scenes and centres on a grisly murder-suicide. MacMillan himself actually died backstage during a performance in 1992. And now, 30 years later, a revival meant to mark that national loss unfolds amid another one. Opening night was the Royal Ballet’s first performance since Queen Elizabeth II’s passing.
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It happens that three of the programs I was most interested in seeing this season fell in the same week. One (Oct. 5) consisted of a medley of pieces to the music of Stravinsky; another (Oct. 6) combined the 1959 work “Episodes,” set to four works by Anton von Webern with the sumptuous “Vienna Waltzes,” from 1977; and the last (Oct. 7) included two of the company’s major “hits” of the last decade-and-a-half, Alexei Ratmansky’s “Concerto DSCH” and Justin Peck’s “Everywhere We Go.”
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Today I’m speaking with the divine Jenna Roberts. Jenna grew up in Newcastle and started dancing only because a local ballet studio set up shop on the same street as her family home. But as fortune would have it, that local studio happened to be the Marie Walton Mahon Dance Academy, as it was known back then. And so Jenna, and little sister Callie, started dancing. For any outsider, it was clear the Robert’s sisters were born to dance—with high arches and long, lean legs, genetics almost pre-determined their careers. By the time Jenna was a teen, she was winning...
PlusLong 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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