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Alive and Barely Kicking
FEATURES | Par Paul McInnes

Alive and Barely Kicking

It's being mooted that Tokyo, and Japan as a whole, escaped the full brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic and its catastrophic effect on the world's population and global economy. The number of cases is relatively low when compared to Europe and the US, and the number of deaths or serious cases decreasing daily. When Yuriko Koike, Governor of Tokyo, introduced a lockdown in the spring of 2020 the city became a wasteland for a few months with most people working from home and bars, restaurants and retail stores either closed, operating on limited opening hours or completely empty. 

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Spilled Ink
REVIEWS | Par Valentina Bonelli

Spilled Ink

There is a global and personal story behind “Ink,” the new creation by Dimitris Papaioannou that premiered in September in Turin, Italy. Just before the European lockdown, the Greek artist was working on his new creation (still untitled): a piece for seven performers which was supposed to debut on the 6th of May at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, an international co-production involving thirteen main institutions, among them the Avignon festival, Lyon Dance Biennial, London Sadler’s Wells, Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville, Napoli Teatro Festival.

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Four Characters in Search of a Plot
FEATURES | Par Oksana Khadarina

Four Characters in Search of a Plot

On September 10th, the Bolshoi Theater opened its 245th ballet season with a surprising premiere. “Four Characters in Search of a Plot” ("Четыре персонажа в поисках сюжета") featured four young international choreographers, making their debut with Russia’s esteemed ballet troupe. Commissioned were an hour-long piece,“The Ninth Wave” by Bryan Arias (Puerto Rico) and three 15-minute works, “Just” by Simone Valastro (Italy), “Fading” by Dimo Milev (Bulgaria) and “Silentium” by Martin Chaix (France).

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Giselle
REVIEWS | Par Oksana Khadarina

An Eternal Giselle

When German poet Heinrich Heine wrote De l’Allemagne (“On Germany”), which was published in Paris in 1835, he couldn’t have imagined that two short paragraphs from his book, where he so evocatively and vividly described an ancient Slavic legend of the Wilis, betrothed young maidens who perished before their wedding day, would inspire “Giselle”—one of the most enduring and popular ballets ever made—the quintessential Romantic-era classic.

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Cinderella
REVIEWS | Par Oksana Khadarina

Daring and Destiny

When Alexei Ratmansky was commissioned to create a new version of “Cinderella” for the Mariinsky Ballet, in 2002, he was an up-and-coming choreographer, virtually unknown in the West. In Russia, however, he was already regarded as a promising talent and a new hope.

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New Ghost
DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

New [digital] Ghosts

What was live, I can pause, and it occurs to me that not being able to conveniently pause a live performance was one of the things I most enjoyed about it. It was live. It is live. It was/is roaring along, independent of my will. And in having no control over any part of its trajectory, I disappeared completely, in the best possible sense. I wasn’t me in the theatre or hall, but a series of notes, a flurry of limbs, a lightness, an extension, particles illuminated by stage lighting; anything. In this freedom, a different kind of pause. A...

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Pennefather films
DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | Par Oksana Khadarina

Summer Shorts

In the beginning of August, Marquee TV—a performing arts streaming platform—unveiled its inaugural “Summer Short Film Festival,” a curated selection of 28 short films of dance and music from around the world. The festival is a result of the partnership of Marquee TV with the San Francisco Dance Film Festival and Scotland’s Screen.dance festival. All the entries of “Summer Shorts” are offered for free viewing until the end of the month.

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Kaatsbaan Dance Oasis
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

Kaatsbaan Dance Oasis

Real live dancing! In other times those three words might connote a neon sign outside a strip club. But in the time of Covid-19 you can simply take them at face value. And in this case, they refer to the highbrow shows of the Kaatsbaan Summer Festival, where a rotating cast of stars from the NY dance scene are performing on weekends all summer long. Stella Abrera, whose retirement performance as a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater was canceled due to the pandemic just months ago, is already flourishing in her second career as artistic director of the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, NY. In fact, she and executive director Sonja Kostich have managed to pull off quite a feat, holding the only live dance performances pretty much anywhere in the United States this summer. I lucked out: for the last five months...

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Tanz im August 2.0
FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | Par Merilyn Jackson

Tanz im August 2.0

Despite what the world is suffering this year, two of Europe’s most prestigious international summer dance festivals commit to go forward with drastically truncated, yet vital and imaginative programs. Berlin’s Tanz im August, under the artistic direction of Virve Sutinen, and the Venice Biennale’s Festival Danza under Marie Chouinard’s curatorial leadership will open in late August and mid-October respectively. Each artistic director spoke with me via Skype and Zoom recently about the hardships and angst of redesigning their festivals during this brutal pandemic. This month, we feature Tanz im August and how they pivoted from cancellation to a ten-day online...

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Festival Lights
DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | Par Róisín O'Brien

Festival Lights

Edinburgh is quiet. In August, the city normally swells with people jostling to get into theatres, pubs, shipping crates, beer gardens, and tents. The festivals are a key part of Edinburgh’s identity, and while there are often murmurs within the industry that a break from, or a scale back of the festivals wouldn’t do the city any harm, nobody wanted a break this way.

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Memories and Illusions
REVIEWS | Par Oksana Khadarina

Memories and Illusions

The details of the tragic demise of the Romanov family, the last Imperial dynasty of Russia—and what really happened on the fateful night on July 17, 1918, in a secluded mansion, in Ekaterinburg, a town in the Ural Mountains—presented a great mystery that puzzled historians and researches for decades. The ultimate destiny of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fedorovna, was particularly clouded by enigma, speculation and intrigue. For years, there were several pretenders, riotously claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, who (as was believed by many) managed to survive the bloody...

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Bright Lights and Bach
DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Bright Lights and Bach

It begins in a place I know well. In the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria. Benedicte Bemet, who was promoted to coryphée in 2013, to soloist in 2016, to senior artist in 2018, and to principal artist in 2019 with The Australian Ballet, is seated at the far end of the hall. Beneath the prismatic revelation of Leonard French’s Great Hall ceiling (1963–67), Bemet is alone.

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Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard
Starry Nights

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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