A Ballet Festival
The theme driving Misty Copeland’s curation of the Joyce Theater’s Ballet Festival was “to center Black, Brown, and Queer artists.”
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Latest
Solidarity
My first two shows at this year’s Dance Base as part of the Edinburgh Fringe show the consummate taste of artistic director Tony Mills. Two brilliant young companies from the Basque Country perform very different, but no less thrilling, work.
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White Space
When dance happens in non-traditional spaces, it can change the way it is seen and experienced. As Leonard Cohen said about the cracks in everything, “that’s where the light gets in.”
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Classical Style
“Ballet: the New Classic,” brainchild of fashion photographer Yumiko Inoue and K-Ballet Tokyo associate artist, Shohei Horiuchi, combines haute couture with innovative dance. Like sculpture in motion, it’s their third collaboration since creative director Inoue and producer and choreographer Horiuchi first realized their stylish vision in 2022.
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Writing a New Story
What should ballet look like? From the eight pieces that compose the first program of Misty Copeland’s curation for the Joyce Theater’s annual Ballet Festival, this much is clear: there’s no one single answer.
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Venice, Old and New
Old and new generations intersect each other in the city of Venice. This is true for dance as well, which had the lagoon city as a picturesque backdrop this summer for the Biennale Danza, where poetry and intellectual excellence are still preserved in its artistic offerings, even under the siege of tourism.
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Transcending Limitations
It starts with a tiny, barely noticed jerk of a hand or arm. Just one simple gesture, and then all hell breaks loose. TF Cia de Dança brings what has to be one of the most frenzied, sweaty pieces of dance to the Edinburgh Festival.
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A Call for Empathy
Part of artistic director Tony Mills’ remit at Dance Base is to seek out wonderful dance artists from across the world. This year, two sets of performances from Detours Festival, Brussels have been specially selected by Mills to perform in Edinburgh.
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In the Flow with Vangeline
For the final event of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City outdoor Dance Encounters series, Butoh artist Vangeline performed the newly commissioned work “Naiad Metal” in the Paul Milstein Reflecting Pool at Hearst Plaza.
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Flamenco Soul
The Spanish term for a heightened state of emotion and authenticity, duende, roughly translates to a single word, “soul.”
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Dance and the Metropolis
Midway through the new book Nonstop Bodies: How Dance Shaped New York City, author Rennie McDougall pivots away from a chapter on the modernism of George Balanchine and the slum-clearing process of creating his “temple at Lincoln Center” to flesh out another diasporic music and dance culture emanating out of Harlem during a similar time in history: mambo.
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Featured Reads
Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
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Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
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School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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