Birds of a Feather
Bird-themed dances are nothing new. In addition to the likes of “Swan Lake” (in its numerous iterations, Hello, Matthew Bourne!), “The Firebird” and “The Dying Swan,” there was also Merce Cunningham’s 1991 “Beach Birds.”
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Wild Child
Juliana F. May’s “Optimistic Voices,” which premiered last week at BAM Fisher, was pitched as an exploration of the “tangled contradictions of family, eroticism, and motherhood.”
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Pulling Back the Curtain
In the summer of 2007, writer Stephen Manes, known for his best-selling Bill Gates biography, over thirty books for young adults and children, and for his work as a technology columnist, proposed a new endeavor. He wished to spend an entire season at Pacific Northwest Ballet to observe like a fly on the wall and capture in written word a world of which most people will never catch a glimpse.
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The Game is On
Move over, Matthew Bourne, there is a new voice in theatrical dance plays. Choreographer Penny Saunders' bespoke production of “Sherlock,” performed by Grand Rapids Ballet, was not only a triumph in bringing literature’s favorite super sleuth to the stage in dance form, but is an early contender as one of the 2025-26 dance season’s very best.
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Matters of the Heart
On the night of Halloween in South Bend, Indiana, I weave through costumed partygoers as I make my way to a special double bill at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
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To the Beat of the Drum
This fall, Japan Society is celebrating the centenary of legendary Japanese post-war author Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) with a series of works in theater, film, and dance inspired by his oeuvre.
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Home Lands
Powerhouse: International, the newly launched arts festival in Gowanus, Brooklyn, continued its fall offerings with the multidisciplinary work “Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna,” co-presented with L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival.
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Past Lives, Future Selves
In an animation that is woven through the performances of traditional dances in Indigenous Enterprise’s “Still Here,” a young boy watches a video of powwow musicians and dancers with his grandfather on Youtube.
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Invisible Wounds
It was apropos that I attended choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu’s latest work, “Fragmented Shadows,” just before Halloween.
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Disappearing Act
Making its long anticipated debut at Sadler’s Wells, “Figures in Extinction" is perhaps the brightest new feather in Nederland Dans Theater’s cap.
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ABT, Past, Present, and Future
The final program of American Ballet Theatre’s fall season, titled “Innovations Past and Present,” featured the world premiere of Juliano Nunes “Have We Met!?” as well as two company gems: Alexei Ratmansky’s “Serenade after Plato’s Symposium” and George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations.”
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Natural Histories
Miriam Miller steps into the center and raises her arm with deliberation, pressing her palm upward to the vaulted Gothic ceiling of the cathedral.
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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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