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The Crucible
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

You Want It Darker

How to dance a dance of contrition? Jealousy, slander, hysteria and fear? Helen Pickett's latest, more fleshed-out adaptation of Arthur Miller's classic The Crucible arrives at an interesting time, culturally, when the two most recent successful TV franchises focus on female protagonists: The Handmaid's Tale and Killing Eve (the former focusing on misogyny and oppression, the latter, psychopathy and sexuality). She pulls the audience into the shadow psyche, by framing the Salem witch trials around the affair between servant Abigail Williams (Claire Souet) and affluent, married man John Proctor (Barnaby Rook Bishop) and consequently, the fall-out in their deeply religious...

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The Chosen
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

Never Let Me Go

It's perhaps entirely apposite to watch something as glorious as this strange, elegiac piece from artistic director Kally Lloyd-Jones on this week, of all weeks, when the global impetus is on the effects of climate change, and all of our futures. (We are doomed if action isn't taken.) It's all about tension and trust within day-to-day relationships for this “intensely personal” piece choreographed by Lloyd-Jones, in collaboration with the cast.  

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Alvin Ailey
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

Hip and Harmonious

It’s been 30 years since Alvin Ailey’s death, but his company looks eager as ever to spread the gospel he wrote: a hip, harmonious union of modern dance and black vernacular styles. Ailey’s eminent legacy infuses every piece the troupe performs, even recent commissions like those on show in this UK tour. Where he led, his dancers continue to follow, finding vibrant new ways to honour the lives and experiences of black America.

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Cullberg Ballet
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

A Study in Energy and Form

Deborah Hay, a torchbearer of America’s 1960s postmodern dance movement, usually deals in minimalism, which means her work rarely feels embellished, emotive or particularly intense; you’re unlikely encounter explicit themes or narratives. The story is the body and how it moves through space in different iterations—how motions can reach beyond the recognised borders of skill and performance in search of something reflective. The idea of liminality is fundamental to Hay’s choreography, which is usually devised using esoteric questions relating to time, perception and place.

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Bangarra Dance Theatre
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Stamping Ground

From many languages, one song; from “the beginning of day,”[note]David Unaipon, Stephen Muecke and Adam Shoemaker (eds.), Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines (Carlton: Miegunyah Press at Melbourne University Press, 2001), 217[/note] shared knowledge, respect, and understanding; from an unbreakable connection to land and community, come together, with purpose, invites Bangarra Dance Theatre. Come together for “30 years of sixty five thousand” to mark the company’s 30th anniversary. Come together to learn, dig deep, acknowledge, and say thank you. “With roots in the world’s oldest continuing culture, “Bangarra: 30 years of sixty five thousand” carries the spirit of Bangarra into...

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Sylvia
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Melody and Mythology

I have long wished to swim through the other-worlds created by Georges Méliès, and Stanton Welch’s “Sylvia,” a co-production between Houston Ballet and the Australian Ballet, gives me the opportunity to do just that; to submerge myself in a fantastical landscape that delights in the play of model making and storytelling; in how we tell a story and the story itself. Theatrical and larger than life.

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Matthew Bourne Romeo and Juliet
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

Youth in Revolt

Like Baz Luhrmann before him, Matthew Bourne’s contemporary reworking of “Romeo and Juliet” adds a coat of grit to fair Verona. Gone are the marbled columns and wrought-iron balconies of the Capulet court; it’s all sheetrock and cold metal bars at the Verona Institute, a juvie-asylum hybrid where disaffected teens are doped into submission. Absent too are the feuding families. Romeo’s parents are shellacked politicians, eager to hand their son over for medicated safekeeping, while Juliet’s are absent from the picture altogether. A legion of tyrannical guards stand in the way of our star-crossed lovers, commanded by a nightmarish Tybalt...

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Battery Dance Festival
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Stone

Battery Dance Festival

Though Battery Dance Festival has had many names and neighborhoods through nearly 40 years running, shifted by floods and unnatural phenomena altering the geography of the city, its home here, along the waterfront in Battery Park against the New York Harbor, brings the sublime into the space. The sun, in particular, backgrounding the seven dances on the first day of the weeklong free festival, arcs through the acts of the show, giving a program from companies from around the globe some grandeur and structure. It’s beautiful, and free, so its flaws can be forgiven.

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Yang Liping
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

The Ultimate Sacrifice

It's the screaming that resonates around the auditorium. The blood curdling, hellish shrieks that chill to the bone. Such shrill cries to the gods to intervene. Ululations to despair and emptiness, entirely bereft of hope, rise up and circle the space. Is there anything more heart-rending, to see someone cry, and feel powerless to intervene? Crying, we enter the world. Screaming, we leave.

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Ballet Festival
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

Ballet Festival

By late summer in NYC the big hometown ballet troupes have followed their well-heeled supporters to their summer playgrounds in Vail, Nantucket, the Hamptons, and Saratoga Springs. What a treat then to have stars of the Royal Ballet present four different programs at the Joyce Theater in the doldrums of August. Kevin O’Hare, the company’s artistic director, curated the opening lineup and also invited current principals Lauren Cuthbertson and Edward Watson as well as former dancer/current designer Jean-Marc Puissant to arrange the other three—an interesting and generous idea. The first two bills ran last week, and though they were rather lightweight that...

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Venice Dance Biennale
REVIEWS | Par Merilyn Jackson

The 13th Venice Dance Biennale

Leaving Venice after nearly two weeks of watching dance at the 13th Biennale Danza, our water taxi hurtled over the wakes of other boats darting from the airport. The Adriatic, a dancing sea of oscillating currents, provided an exhilarating ride along its shallowest tip. I would miss the dance, our lovely flat above a narrow canal and filled with musical toy-like gondolas each morning, the people and conversations. Maybe not so much being lost among the narrow, shaded alleys, the only escape from the brutal heat. The Biennale, and all of Europe, endured a few days of the “Sahara Wave.”...

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Glance from the Edge
DANCE FILM | Par Kosta Karakashyan

Glance from the Edge

Many choreographers today are looking for ways to engage the audience beyond the stage. Site-specific work and film are just some of the ways dance artists are keeping their work both fresh and lasting. Glance from the Edge is an international collaboration between Bulgarian co-directors and choreographers Kosta Karakashyan and Stephanie Handjiiska, American director of photography Kevin Chiu and composer Jude Icarus. After wrapping the principal photography, the team sat down to debrief together about the inspiration, process and goals for the project.  

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Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard
Starry Nights

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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