Vow of Stability
I have seen Megan Fairchild dance three times. The first was semi-unintentional—soon after moving to New York in the fall of 2024, I got one of those $30 for 30+ Under tickets and sat in the orchestra level on stage right.
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Perfect Pairs
For the sixth year now, the BAAND has gotten back together at Lincoln Center. That is, the BAAND Dance Festival, the annual Chanel-sponsored program that unites five New York City dance companies: Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem.
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En Plein Air
There’s just something about the outdoor dance performances that summer brings. Movements take on additional urgency when rain threatens.
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A Timeless Celebration
With the exception of the central pas de deux from “Le Corsaire,” this bill, held to celebrate Marianela Nuñez’s remarkable 28-year run at the Royal Ballet, pulls solely from the twentieth century.
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Where Emergence Meets Urgency
The 2026 edition of the festival SpringForward unfolded in Guimarães, Portugal, the European Green Capital of the year, a city whose commitment to sustainability offered a fitting backdrop for a festival dedicated to emerging choreographic futures.
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Topographies of Dance
The first edition of the Tanztriennale in Hamburg, back in June, unfolded like an emotional topography: a landscape shaped by care rather than by theme; under the co‑direction of Monica Gillette and Gwen Hsin‑Yi Chang, Tanztriennale operated as a temporary commons: a place where choreography, conversation and community are allowed to influence one another.
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Directing La Danse
In a context such as the Venice Biennale, where you can easily run into ballet stars across the Arsenale and dance alongside them in workshops, it felt especially apt to pay tribute to a filmmaker who, with extraordinary care, intelligence and unsentimental clarity, brought us so close to the hidden mechanics of dance: Frederick Wiseman.
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Ode to Authenticity
Launched in 2020 after the hashtag #maleballerina went viral, Ballet22 is driven by a mission all the more urgent since the current presidential administration resumed its attacks on the LGBTQ community.
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Five Remembrances of a Benefactor
The way Margaret Jenkins tells it, Dianne came to her dance company’s studios in 1973, asking to take class. Dianne was then living in a one-bedroom apartment near San Francisco’s Mission District with her scientist husband and three young kids.
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Oceans Apart
Waiting in the theater, the first unhurried trickle of French composer Erik Satie’s piano variation barely registers amidst the house chatter. Sparse and minimalistic, swelling with silences, the striking keys eventually conjure up a dancer.
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Timeless Terrain
“When you visit Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, you realise that this is a place where time does not exist,” writes choreographer Frances Rings in her notes for Terrain, and the resonance with Wayne McGregor’s theme for the 2026 Biennale Danza, Time Does Not Exist, is unmistakable.
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All About Love
It starts out light and coquettish. George Balanchine’s “Sonatine,” set to the composition by Maurice Ravel of the same name, is undeniably lighthearted, as the dancers—here, Léonore Baulac and Germain Louvet—find themselves animated by the music, as they share the stage with a grand piano (and pianist Elena Bonnay at its helm).
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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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