Love is a Rose
What role do imitation and “borrowing” play in developing an artist’s oeuvre? And how, as a viewer, do you separate your perceptions of an artist’s choreography from your awareness of theatrical trends?
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Pure Lust and Combat Fatigue
On the surface, these two ballets could not be more contrasting. Yet, what thematically links them is the iconoclastic approach of both Sir Kenneth MacMillan's choreography (this production marks twenty five years of his passing) and the bold invention of Scottish Ballet's own Artistic Director Christopher Hampson—not to mention, of course, the “The Rite Of Spring's” notorious first Parisian performance in 1913, which caused riots.
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Dancing DNA
“Can an intelligent being comprehend the instructions to make itself?” This is one of the questions at the heart of “Autobiography,” Wayne McGregor’s newest work and the latest in a line of ventures reflecting his fascination with science, particularly genetics. (Just this summer the choreographer teamed up with the Genetics Clinic of the Future to have his entire genome sequenced.) Here ten dancers from McGregor’s London-based company probe his personal memories as well as his actual genetic code to weave a helix of memory, contemplation and speculation.
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Fearless at Forty
When terpsichorean stars align, magic can happen. Such is the case with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, a troupe founded 40 years ago by Lou Conte and directed by the indefatigable Glenn Edgerton since 2009. Edgerton comes to his role with a prestigious pedigree: Having danced 11 years with the Joffrey Ballet before taking the helm at Netherlands Dance Theater for a decade, his curatorial skills are in full flower as he and his 16-member troupe celebrate Hubbard’s four-decade anniversary.
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Why Citizenship?
Before I tell you all about the inaugural Transform Festival, four words: Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project. The name has circulated among San Francisco dance fans since Klaymoon began making hip hop dance theater here in 2010, but so far the group has only toured to Oregon and Kenya, and they should be known everywhere. “Ancient Children,” the closer on the Transform Festival’s penultimate night, simply possesses the stage. The performers are charismatic, the hip-hop dance commanding, the truths delivered unflinching. In case I haven’t been emphatic enough: Call up your local presenter. You need to see this.
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Brilliant Moderns
I raise my hand up above my head. I let it fall down. Connected to my body, my arm remains secure in its socket of the shoulder blade. My arm does not fall to the ground. My body is connected, “dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.” My body has my back, secure “doin’ the skeleton dance ….The backbone's connected to the neck bone. Doin’ the skeleton dance.” And it was in this manner that I read Alice Topp’s new choreographic work, “Little Atlas.” There may have been three dancers on the stage, Leanne Stojmenov, Kevin Jackson, and Andrew Killian,...
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An Original Alice
It takes “layers and layers of tulle together in a honeycomb construction that opens up when it closes”[note]Senior Gentleman’s Cutter, Marsia Bergh, in conversation with Kate Scott, “Making Wonderland,” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland programme, The Australian Ballet, State Theatre, Melbourne, 2017, 22[/note] to make a tail that befits a White Rabbit. It takes countless hours (of drafting, devising, twinkling, rehearsing, measuring, stitching, and repeating thrice) to create a world of nonsense in every sense and this is as it should be.
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The Spirit of Bennelong
I lie low. I nestle in the soil. Are you a fighter? A collaborator? A victim? A survivor? An idealist? A realist? Some days I feel like I am Bennelong. I am Bennelong.
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Coming on in Leaps and Bounds
Group dynamics are the key focus in Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's explosive “Rain,” which responds to the classic "Music for 18 Musicians" (1974-6) by American avant-garde composer Steve Reich. It is of course not the first time she has worked with Reich's music, as her company Rosas have previously performed to "Drumming," another seminal Reich piece. It's a perfect fit, as she is a deeply lyrical choreographer, fully cognisant of the nuances and textures of Reich's oeuvre: the rhythmic shifts, throbs, hums and waves; the voices which pulse like heartbeats. She really puts her dancers through their paces—it's almost as...
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Nightdance
A stagehand dressed in black makes the most of their invisibility cloak to move props into position. The great horned owl makes the most of their night vision to seek out their prey with efficiency. Swoop, snatch, gobble, gone. A human night owl stays up late, night adapted, like their namesake, their form revealed only by the screen’s cold glare as they tap at the keyboard. Wrangling deadlines, devouring novels, gambling their savings, postponing the activities of the day—who knows? Such is the endless allure of nocturnal creatures.
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Future Tense
Forward-thinking London-based urban dance collective Blue Boy Entertainment's superb show is so titled with a deliberate mis-spelling, as according to their co-Artistic Director Michael 'Mikey J' Asante: “The names are written the way they are because they could be the names of people”—a deliberate tactic to avoid racial connotations and stereotyping, from the racially diverse company.The colours are rooted in universality, tightly packed in themes of identity, war, and survival, which touch everyone. It is a thrilling call for peace and tolerance.
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Ballet Now & Then
What do a clown and a ballerina have in common? Plenty, as it turns out, if, that is, the clown is none other than the masterful Bill Irwin and the terpsichore is New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck, curator of BalletNOW, a trademarked, quasi-gala that features leading dancers from New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Miami City Ballet, the Royal Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet in three diverse, tasting-menu type programs.
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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,...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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