World-class review of ballet and dance.
On opening night of the world premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s “Oscar” at the Australian Ballet’s new home for the next three years, the Regent Theatre (as the State Theatre undergoes renovations), I am catapulted from September 13, 2024 to April 26, 1885, and the commencement of the trial of Oscar Wilde.
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Having a dance company is always difficult. But founding a troupe and keeping it going for 25 years is even more challenging. Add to that the political, cultural and economic landscape of South Africa, and the odds might seem unsurmountable.
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New York City Ballet concluded its 75th anniversary year with its traditional summer residency upstate at the amphitheater of Saratoga Springs’s Performing Arts Center (SPAC).
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The inaugural Unite Ballet Festival, directed by Calvin Royal III, took place at the Joyce Theater from August 13-18, 2024.
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Before digital audio, compact discs, cassette tapes with their ribbons of sound sandwiched within a small case, and pressed vinyl records, came wax cylinders to record and reproduce sound, thanks to Thomas Edison’s 1877 invention of the hand-cranked phonograph.
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Far from Southern Spain, but in the heart of Hollywood, that once monthly dance staple, “Forever Flamenco,” was alive and well again at the Fountain Theatre, if only for the month of August.
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Since 1980, the Australian Ballet's National Tour (or really, the Dancers' Company as everyone calls it), is a much anticipated event for the graduating students of the Australian Ballet School.
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On a mid-summer evening, along the banks of the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan, a colorful band of performers costumed in orange and blue merged with the sunset and the water. Akihito Ichihara, principal dancer with the Butoh dance company Sankai Juku and founder of Elf, performed with a group of students who had just completed a workshop with him.
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Every year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I look forward to the Taiwan Season. A curated selection of shows within the organised chaos of the festival, the quality of the dancing is always exemplary. I caught two out of the four shows of this season’s offering.
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Dance aficionados are on high alert any time there’s a new Bill T. Jones work. That the artistic director/co-founder and choreographer of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company did not make dances for “The Motherboard Suite,” but directed it, still made for a solid evening of dance drama.
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Once a year New York City dance lovers and Brooklyn beach-goers converge in the Venn diagram of performance art and natural splendor that is Beach Sessions Dance Series.
PlusWatching 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,...
PlusThe 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.
PlusAfter 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.
PlusAn “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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