Dance to the Music
BalletX concluded its 2024 season in its new home, the Suzanne Roberts Theatre across from the Wilma, a theater that had been its home for 18 years.
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Coming into the Light
Loïe Fuller, groundbreaking artist, dancer and theatrical maverick, is finally getting her due in the feature-length documentary, Obsessed with Light. Opening at New York’s Quad Cinema on December 6, the film, directed by Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl, is a meditation on light and the enduring passion to create.
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An Evening with Omar
A duet featuring the choreographer himself was an unexpected treat when Boca Tuya, founded in 2018 by Omar Román de Jesús, took the stage at 92NY last week. De Jesús is a scintillating model for the liquid, undulating movement style that flows through all three works of the evening.
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Dance Critics' Festival
Designed to look at the process and art of writing dance criticism, this one-day event will feature panel discussions with Fjord Review writers, audience Q&A sessions, a conversation with a special guest choreographer, and networking reception.
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Dreaming with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Creating Urban Bush Women forty years ago—after having had a dream about her parents—Jawole Willa Jo Zollar may have stepped down as artistic director from the women-centered group dedicated to telling stories of the African diaspora through traditional and modern Africanist dance forms, but she’s busier than ever.
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Balanchine's America
George Balanchine loved American culture because he loved America. He had lived through tyranny and chaos as a boy in the Russian Revolution, and though his displays of affection for his adopted homeland could border on silly (like the Western bolo ties he favored as fashion statements), he never took for granted the possibilities he found here, never stopped extolling America’s freshness and energy.
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A Tale of Two Cities United by Dance
Philadelphia witnessed two Gala celebrations of dance and performance on opposite sides of town in October. It seemed like a tale of two cities. One in the center where much of the cultural events take place and the other on the fringes, down by the riverside.
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Lauren Lovette, On a New Path
Hello Lauren! We haven’t spoken since June, when I interviewed you for a School of American Ballet Connoisseurship Series program about the Workshop performances.
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Human Movement
Midway through “Frontera,” the dancers of Animals of Distinction, a multimedia dance company based out of Montreal, press their bodies into each other to form a line at the bottom of a large rectangle of blue light.
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A Liberated Congress
“Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” said Mickey Rooney to Judy Garland in the definitive Depression-era musical film, Babes in Arms, lo those many years ago. Well, if Denna Thomsen and Zak Ryan Schlegel had been around back then, what a show they would have mounted!
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The Body as Archive
All too often it seems the human memory is too short. History is easily forgotten and, in a week where Americans are still processing the results of the presidential election, it is hard not to feel like we are doomed to repeat ourselves.
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Dance not Tell
Eyeballs, screaming crones, and bloody axes were projected on a scrim at the top of American Ballet Theater’s new production of “Crime and Punishment.” Not bad for Halloween programming! Yet, despite Isobel Waller-Bridge’s cinematic, pressure-cooker score—which frequently evoked escape room music—there was very little suspense in Helen Pickett and James Bonas’s new narrative full-length.
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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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