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Unleashed
Arthur Janov, the recently deceased nonagenarian psychologist who developed primal scream therapy, would, no doubt, have felt right at home experiencing “Attractor,” a ritualistic, twerky-jerky rave directed and choreographed by Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek. Oh, and the unhinged neo-apocalyptic score, performed live by Indonesian duo, Senyawa (vocalist Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi on electrified “Bamboo Spear” and other instruments), was itself a gut-punching primal scream of, well, Mozartean proportions.
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The Stars Align
The first iteration of Canada's All Star Gala was presented in February of this year, showcasing work from the classical canon danced by gifted artists from around the world. Helmed by ballerina Svetlana Lunkina, it was a balletic treat, a confection of classicism, featuring gems rarely if ever performed in North America. A modern programme was promised, and ambitious as it seemed to present not one but two of these spectaculars within a year, the second All Star Gala took place on Saturday night at the Sony Centre.
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All that Glitters
“When they said glitter, I immediately thought—no,” photographer Karolina Kuras was somewhat wary of truckloads of glitter entering her Toronto studio for a photoshoot with Brent Parolin, second soloist of the National Ballet of Canada. And yet, the results are nothing less than, well, sparkling. Makeup and styling by Ashley Readings.
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Double Exposure
Aretha Franklin’s voice surges warm and bosomy from the sound system, singing the 1960’s Sam Cooke classic, A change is gonna come . . . As she sings, two dancers cavort below, an inane little chirping noise intrudes, and what we gather are tweets from the choreographer David Roussève appear above, emoticons and all. His favorite note from Aretha is about to come, he tweets. Listen for it . . . That one. The one that makes him feel mmmm. The way Wendy and Ryan are dancing, that’s the way that note makes him feel, he says. And he goes...
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Songs of Bukovina
A world premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s “Songs of Bukovina” was one of the highlights of American Ballet Theatre’s fall season at the Lincoln Center. The ballet is choreographed to the commissioned score by Leonid Desyatnikov, namely a selection of preludes from his newly-minted, incandescent Bukovinian Songs (24 Preludes for Piano). (The music in its entirety will be premiered in Russia next spring.) This is the sixth ballet of Ratmansky-Desyatnikov creative team and the third with the entirely new music. Previously, the choreographer made two ballets: “Lost Illusions” (2011) for Bolshoi Ballet and “Opera” (2013) for La Scala Ballet, for which...
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A Love Supreme
In early October, Princeton University hosted A Festival of the Arts, celebrating the grand opening of the university’s impressive new Lewis Arts complex. Presented by the Department of Music and the Lewis Center for the Arts, the festival boasted over 100 events in music, art, and dance, including daily sold-out performances of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Salva Sanchis’s “A Love Supreme.”
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Gifts from Fokine
Gobsmacked by beauty and the timelessness of ballet! Indeed, what a gift it was to witness terpsichorean history come alive—if only for several hours—when Segerstrom Center for the Arts presented the Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra as its season opener in an all-Fokine program.
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Count Me In
A performance that took place in a 7 x 4 metre box, covered in two-way mirrored Plexiglas film, offered the promise of, as then billed, “two bodies, a drum kit, and a melody.” Two years later, the melody has gone, but the two bodies and kit remain; “by doing away with narrative and melody, and making a constantly 'in flux' relationship to the public, attention is focused on the agency of the drumming and dancing and the audience.” Presented at the Substation as part of this year’s Melbourne Festival, the chance to walk around said mirrored box promised a little...
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Tales from Odessa
New York City Ballet’s program titled “Here/Now” included a selection of works the company presented during its last season’s spring festival of the same title. This was a winning quadruple bill on all levels, featuring ballets by some of the most prominent choreographers working today: Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, and Justin Peck.
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A Will Within Nature
At its previous performances in North Carolina and New York, Kate Weare’s commanding “Marksman” played in large proscenium theaters, where Clifford Ross’s backdrops of black and grey images suggesting cresting tsunamis loomed high above the six dancers. The effect was lost last weekend in the black box ODC Theater where I saw “Marksman” on the San Francisco stop of its yearlong tour. Here, the dancers were practically near enough to touch, and Ross’s totemic scrolls did not seem so overpowering. But while Weare herself seemed to lament the shift in scale during Friday’s post-performance talk, I wouldn’t have had it...
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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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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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