World-class review of ballet and dance.
As Tony Bennett sang, the curtain rose on silhouetted dancers dressed in all black and in whimsical monochrome polka-dotted tutus. Then the three female leads in Jessica Lang’s new work “ZigZag” whirled onstage in bursts of yellow, blue and pink tulle designed by Wes Gordon for Carolina Herrera. What came next was an infectiously joyful, yet nostalgic performance, filled with its fair share of jazzy shimmies and finger snaps.
Plus
Tapping into wanderlust in its seventh season (and most ambitious one yet), Fall for Dance North (FFDN) took audiences on an expansive journey to Bangalore, Havana, and London through its Signature Program, a three-part dance film conceived by Ilter Ibrahimof and Indo-Canadian director Vikram Dasgupta.
Plus
It’s no accident that dancer/choreographer Micaela Taylor named her troupe The TL Collective, the ‘TL’ short for ‘To Love,’ because watching this standout performer in her own works, one instantly falls in love with her. Indeed, with Taylor, who is decidedly the complete package, another word comes to mind: Star, with a capital ‘S.’ And so it was that this magnetic performer and her troupe of seven shredded the stage at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Friday with three works, including a world premiere, “Time.”
Plus
Opening night of Martha Graham Dance Company’s run at the Joyce Theater was a momentous occasion. Not only did this engagement mark the MGDC’s return to live performance in its home city—a milestone nearly every other marquee company based in New York City has been celebrating this fall—it was also the start of the company’s 96th season. On Tuesday October 26, 2021, the company dancers were in fine form despite more than a year of pandemic protocols, carrying on Martha Graham’s legacy with technical virtuosity and dramatic intensity.
Plus
Every year, City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival offers true medley programming, with hit-or-miss results. But the fifth and final program of this year’s festival was strong from start to finish. Talented young Roman Mejia (New York City Ballet’s newest soloist) kicked off the show by stepping into “Fandango,” a gypsy solo Alexei Ratmansky choreographed for Wendy Whelan in 2010. It has also been danced before by Sara Mearns, but Mejia is the first male to take it on. It was somewhat reworked for Mejia—the women did not perform such aerial manèges—but many of the steps were left unaltered and...
Plus
Ronen (Roni, as he likes to be known) Koresh premiered “TikVAH,” his first work back at Philadelphia’s Suzanne Roberts Theatre since 2019. Two years is a long time in a dancer’s short performance life. Tikvah may mean hope in Hebrew, but it comes from a root word that means to bind or to wait for. In celebrating the 30th year of Koresh Dance Company he kept his 10-member troupe and dance school together through the Covid-19 ordeal by keeping them socially distanced yet moving and in dancing shape in their own Rittenhouse Square studio. No one guessed how long they’d...
Plus
Commissioned by Fuel and directed by filmmaker JJ Abrahams, this intensely personal film, “Salt & Sugar” for Dance International Glasgow is beautiful, but bracingly unsentimental. At forty, critically acclaimed choreographer and dancer Hemabharathy Palani is looking back and taking stock of her life thus far. This film isn't a linear, autobiographical piece though—it is lyrical and dense, showing Palani dancing, teaching and exercising in a variety of locations, such as forests, shimmering grassy fields and indoors in practice studios.
Plus
What better way to review a newly named ballet company than on World Ballet Day? At almost 60 years old, Pennsylvania Ballet recently changed its name to Philadelphia Ballet. Founded by the late Barbara Weisberger with a Ford Foundation grant in the early ‘60s, it inspired the NEA program that funded regional ballet companies around the country. Weisberger passed in December 2020 and the ballet honored her in its 2021 digital online series. During Covid, artistic director Ángel Corella and the board of directors felt it was time to put a more metropolitan brand on the company.
Plus
Principal dancer Maria Kowroski's first entrance of Sunday’s program was just walking slowly toward principal Russell Janzen in George Balanchine’s “Chaconne.” The audience roared until they reached each other at center stage. That scene was repeated over and over Sunday afternoon, the loudest of them as the curtain went up after the end of “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.”
Plus
Chuck Schumer appeared at the opening night of the 2021 Fall for Dance Festival to proudly declare that the Save Our Stages Act passed by the Senate last year rescued all the arts in New York City. I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate, but I didn’t begrudge him the victory lap. And with the return of the live, giddy crowds to City Center for the FFDF, it did feel like business as usual in the dance world for a blissful moment. But when the curtain went up to reveal a massive triangular scaffold with three people dressed as ersatz superheroes...
Plus
“Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere March 13, 2020,” reads the program note for Alejandro Cerrudo’s “One Thousand Pieces,” and therein lies a pandemic tale. The company premiere of Cerrudo’s ballet was supposed to have taken place on that date last year. But on March 12, 2020, as news of the strange new virus spreading through Seattle filled airwaves and iPhones, artistic director Peter Boal and the PNB staff and board gathered to face what was coming. They filmed the dress rehearsal of “One Thousand Pieces.” And the next day, instead of opening night, the theater fell dark.
Plus
Lucinda Childs is considered one of the pillars of the Judson Dance Theater collective and often hailed as a “master of minimalism.” In 1979, she created one of her pure dance works to a score by Philip Glass, while Sol LeWitt contributed film decor featuring the original cast of dancers. Layering rhythms, patterns, and images of dancing bodies, “DANCE”—the result of this collaboration between three art world icons—returns to New York City’s the Joyce Theater October 19-24. Candice Thompson spoke with producers and dancers Caitlin Scranton and Matt Pardo (The Blanket) about why this 40-year old work endures, what it...
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.
Plus
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.
Plus