World-class review of ballet and dance.
The opening to George Balanchine’s “Serenade”—dancers standing feet parallel, right arm reaching up with the palm facing out as if to block the light—sometimes looks like a goodbye. It certainly did on Saturday, as 29-year-old principal dancer Lauren Lovette performed for the last time with New York City Ballet.
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At first glance, everything in Salt Lake City, Utah’s Jeanne Wagner Theatre looks relatively typical. Rows of red velvet seats line the two aisles that lead to a dimly lit proscenium stage. Audience members chat in hushed tones as they take their seats. Ushers shuffle programs as they prepare for the show to begin.
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A beast mourning the beauty he could never have—this is the fate of Creature, the protagonist in Akram Khan’s new production for English National Ballet, just as it was for Quasimodo, King Kong and the canon’s other brutes before him. An apparatus fashioned to withstand the harsh conditions of some indeterminate final frontier, Creature unites mechanical might and human brainpower, a combo that eventually fells the military operation he was designed to bolster. His keeper Marie is the only person who treats him with compassion, but it’s not enough to save either of them from a grisly end. Once the...
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Leave it to Mark Morris to debut his new piece, entitled “Water,” right alongside the East River, at the very tip of Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The score was by Handel, whose “Water Music” was composed for King George I in 1717 and meant to be played on a barge during a royal joyride along the Thames. Uncharacteristically for Mark Morris, the music for this debut was recorded and not live. But the extra percussion added by the helicopters, coast guard boats, ferries, and jet skis was most definitely in-the-moment, and heavy on improv. Despite these distractions, “Water”...
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To look at the ocean can be deceiving. With feet planted in the sand, facing the horizon, we think we know where we are; the tide signals for how long. To look into the ocean is a different story: Looking in offers no sense of start and stop, no sides to stand on, no tide nor time. Looking in confronts us only with an endless sense of motion encompassed by a larger unknown. Bill T. Jones's long-awaited “Deep Blue Sea,” a work massive in both size and depth and presented at the Park Avenue Armory in New York through October...
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It was a historic event. The New York City Ballet performed at the David H. Koch Theater on Tuesday, September 21st for the first time in 18 months. The audience was entirely vaccinated, entirely masked, and even more revved up than a Fall for Dance crowd. Dance legends were scattered all around, Edward Villella sat prominently in the first row. It was a cathartic evening. The outpouring of love for the dancers and the musicians was immense. Each ballet received three curtain calls and a standing ovation. Confetti fell from the rafters at the end. It was wondrous to behold. Was...
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Gene Kelly, what can ya say? A class act. Timeless and evergreen, he is still notching up homages on films and television; and millions of hits on YouTube to subsequent new generations, twenty-five years after his passing. A legend of Hollywood, from the time of wise guys and sassy dames: he was a singer, dancer, actor—the triple threat, the epitome of an all-rounder.
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Today I'm speaking with David Hallberg. We actually started this season with David McAllister who had just stepped down as Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet. We are now speaking with David Hallberg, the brand new Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet. David was born in a small American town called Rapid City in South Dakota. He started dancing at nine years old, after seeing Fred Astaire on the television. And he only started ballet when he was 13. But by 17, he was selected to do a year at the Paris Opera Ballet School before joining his dream company,...
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Pago Pago, Samoa, January 11, 1938: Pan American Captain Edwin Musick piloted the inaugural airmail flight from Hawaii to New Zealand in December 1937. Beginning the return flight to Honolulu and home to Seattle, his plane caught fire, exploding midair. No remains of the seven onboard were found among the wreckage located later that day. The previous year, Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific along with navigator Fred Noonan who had earlier navigated the China Clipper on its first flight between San Francisco and Honolulu, piloted by Musick.
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Today, I’m speaking with the Australian Ballet’s resident choreographer, Alice Topp. Alice was born and raised in Bendigo, a small town in regional Victoria. She started dancing at the age of four and was destined for a career as a ballerina. While Alice’s career at the Australian Ballet is widely known, what many don’t know is that Alice’s journey to the Australian Ballet wasn’t like most. She didn’t train at the Australian Ballet School. Instead, she did a stint at the Royal New Zealand Ballet company. She broke her foot, and then worked in a Melbourne pub to continue her...
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Daniel Riley is the newly appointed artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre. Daniel is a proud Wiradjuri man of Western New South Wales. He grew up around Canberra, inspired by the Tap Dogs, learning contemporary dance, ballet, and tap. But it was a chance encounter with ADTs founder, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman, which changed the direction of Daniel's life to one of pursuing dance as a career. He ultimately headed north to study dance at Queensland University of Technology and following graduation and various adventures building his craft around the globe, Daniel joined Bangarra Dance Theatre, where he spent the next...
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What makes German choreographer/performer Frauke Requardt's work so special is that she never uses spectacle for its own sake—there are always enough ideas to accompany her own vivid, inventive choreography, which scratches both itches of live art and contemporary dance at once.
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.
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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.
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.
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