World-class review of ballet and dance.
Returning after its two-year pandemic hiatus, the 33rd International Conference and Festival of Blacks in Dance kicked off at the end of January with 500 attendees from ten countries convening in downtown Toronto. Hosted in a different North American city each year, the conference visits Toronto for the third time with local co-host dance Immersion, a non-profit organization that produces and promotes dancers and dances of the African Diaspora.
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The Batsheva Dance Company returned to New York City after a four year hiatus for a two-week engagement (February 28-March 12) at the Joyce Theater to perform “Hora,” created by Ohad Naharin. The renowned choreographer, having led this premier dance company of Israel from 1990 to 2018 as artistic director, has shaped an extraordinary company of dancers—creatives in their own right—through his nurturing leadership, visionary approach to dance practice, and his distinctive movement language and toolbox called Gaga. In his current role as house choreographer, he continues to endow Batsheva with a repertoire of bold, characteristic works that are recognized...
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Broadway Bodies is dedicated to “anyone who has ever been told they were too fat, too short, too gay, too disabled, and otherwise too much or not enough to be in a musical.” The book, written by musical theater scholar Ryan Donovan, examines the ways different aspects of identity have historically affected casting on the Great White Way, using shows like A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls, and La Cage aux Folles as case studies to illustrate the issues that arise when bodies are used as an artistic medium.
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It’s been a good year for women leading ballet companies: In the recent past, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell took the reins at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; Tamara Rojo became the first female artistic director of San Francisco Ballet in the troupe’s 89-year history; and Jodie Gates is leading Cincinnati Ballet into a new era.
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When Jared Angle retired from New York City Ballet this past January after a twenty-five year career with the company, he did so in a characteristically understated manner. He danced in only one of the three ballets on the program, playing Prince Ivan in Balanchine’s “Firebird.” Afterward, he received only a modest number of bouquets, having requested that the money be spent, instead, on New York City Ballet’s Education and Public Programs. He then said a few words, thanking the audience for coming to the ballet, his colleagues for their years of friendship, and the orchestra for their music. There...
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On Friday March 3, Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House transformed into Pina Bausch’s fantasy of Brazil via “Água.” For nearly three hours, the charismatic dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, now under the direction of Boris Charmatz, rollicked through classic Bausch terrain—an endless parade of dreamy solos, comedic vignettes, and raucous ensemble scenes—inside a dynamic set.
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After an absence of six years, the New York City Ballet revived Peter Martins’s “The Sleeping Beauty” to close out the Winter Season. A lot has changed at the ballet in that interim, including the departure of Martins himself. But I hadn’t seen this “Beauty” from the front in over 20 years (though I danced 11 different roles in the production in that span)—so for me, it was like seeing a premiere. I’d had it in my mind that Martins’s “Sleeping Beauty” was by far the best of his classical full-lengths (the others being “Romeo and Juliet” and “Swan Lake”),...
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It’s about style. Yes, it’s about men, it’s about men after war, it’s about Birmingham, it’s about working-class identity. But “Peaky Blinders” is also about style. It’s a slow-motion prowl under the metal beams of a hot spitting factory, a cocksure gaze beneath a flat cap, with long coats flapping and the orange stab from a lit cigarette.
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The style Kyle Abraham has honed over the years is unmistakable: a silken coordination of the body in which ripples and undulations pass through skin and sinew; an expressive use of the back; hands that touch, and really feel; impulses that start here but find their way there, and then there; a deep sensitivity to music coupled with an intelligent response to lyrics; a penchant for melancholy, leavened with sass.
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In an extended phone interview, I had the pleasure of posing question after question to Boris Charmatz. He told me about his various projects as dancer and choreographer, starting with association EDNA, the Musée de la Danse and finishing with his artistic direction, as of September 2022, of the world-renowned Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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“I was born on this island of conflict, where beauty and trauma collide,” sings Dohee Lee referring to her native Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea. With sung narrative, she invites the presence of her Korean ancestors and the ancestral land itself for her world premiere of “Chilseong Saenamgut (Duringut): Ritual for Sickness.” Wearing a white cotton robe layered with strips of white paper and a white turban, she rings the shaman’s bell and opens her arms welcoming the audience members at Gibney Center in New York City (February 23-25) to heal along with her in a potent...
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Ballet has long been imbued with a mysterious air. It’s a closed-off world, one that—despite many hopefuls—admits only a select few. Audiences are led to believe that what goes on behind its closed doors is a kind of magic. And when the curtain closes, the beauty they’ve experienced remains.
PlusLong 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.
PlusIt 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.
PlusAs 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.
PlusOne 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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