Staying True: Christopher Marney and the Rebirth of London City Ballet
This past July, the newly resurrected London City Ballet opened its first season since 1996 with a program of rarely seen works and new choreographies.
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Indra’s Vast Net
Imagine a large net stretched across the vast expanse of our world system studded with an infinitely faceted jewel at each intersection.
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Falling, Floating, and Flying
A smoky, orange hue hovers over the stage like wildfire smoke. A woman emerges from the flame, floating erect atop a crawling man’s back. She bends her knees and dismounts, arriving center stage, delivered to the audience like a queen.
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July September Romance
Last night I went to my first show of New York City’s jam-packed fall dance season, and though I never floated outside of the space-time continuum, I did feel invigorated by the New York City Ballet’s excellent opening program.
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What's Going On at Richmond Ballet
En Chalant,” Richmond Ballet artistic director Ma Cong said at the opening night of the company’s Studio Finale series on September 17th, “is the opposite of nonchalant.”
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Reflections, Reverence, and Spellbinding Artistry
Terry Beck first saw Hellmut Gottschild’s Zero Moving dance company as a student at Temple University in the ’70s. Beck was working towards a teaching degree in Special Education and took a work study gig as a glass box technician.
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Sound and Body Waves
Whether bending backwards as if channeling Paul Chavez’ otherworldly sounding music, or crouching down ever so slowly and quasi-teetering on the floor, dancer Roxanne Steinberg proved a master of the body.
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Running Wilde
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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Gregory Maqoma: My Life, My Dance
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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NYCB On and Offstage
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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United
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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New Horizons
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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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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