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Rambert
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Elderkin

Thrill of Motion

Close to the front of the stage, dancer Kym Sojourna moves with calm intensity. Her actions are a study in form and control, each extension aiming to stretch her body as if beyond the reach of her limbs. It is the opening to Wayne McGregor’s “PreSentient,” first created for Rambert 17 years ago when the company was under the direction of Christopher Bruce. Now, in this first triple bill from the company’s new artistic director, Benoit Swan Pouffer, “PreSentient” makes a return to the Rambert repertoire—and it is there to make a statement.

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Edifice Dance Theatre
DANCE FILM | Par Kosta Karakashyan

A Twisted Tale

Edifice Dance Theatre’s new dance film Salomé uses a hybrid ballroom and contact improvisation vocabulary to explore a wide range of human emotions. The company, in collaboration with director Rogério Silva, take Oscar Wilde’s version of the mythical Salomé, the young seductress who requests and is granted Jokanaan’s head on a silver platter, and offer a haunting dance film adaptation featuring sinuous partnering and Silva’s trademark camera work.

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New York City Ballet
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

More New Combinations

New York City Ballet’s spring season featured a new work by Justin Peck as well as Pam Tanowitz’s company debut. Two other recent repertory additions—Matthew Neenan’s “The Exchange” and Gianna Reisen’s “Judah”—were also revived along with company staples and a few rarities. Of the new set I enjoyed Peck’s short, springy “Bright” the most. The stellar coupling of Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen in an airy heaven-scape was fleetingly dreamy. The ballet read as a brief glimpse through the clouds into Elysian fields, and was stunningly god-lit by Brandon Stirling Baker. Mark Dancigers’s score was anthemic yet flowery—with bells and chimes...

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Shostakovich Trilogy
REVIEWS | Par Rachel Howard

Shostakovich Trilogy

There’s a devastating moment that arrives about two-thirds into “Symphony #9,” the first and most powerful panel in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Shostakovich Trilogy,” danced by Mathilde Froustey and Luke Ingham during one of the final performances in San Francisco Ballet’s spring season. The ensemble rushes in with their happy little flexed-foot peasant dances, their movements—penchée splits like ironing boards, hands touching the floor—becoming unabashedly vulgar. Amid the creepily murky lighting, Ingham lifts Froustey, and her feet beat in twittering exuberance as her head, neck and arms hang dead above. The image sears: rarely has art shown us more powerful testimony to...

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Lurking Within
REVIEWS | Par Gracia Haby

Lurking Within

Max Porter’s novel Lanny begins with Dead Papa Toothwort slipping “through one grim costume after another as he rustles and trickles and cusses his way between the trees.”[note]Max Porter’s Lanny (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 2019).[/note] He is the Green Man myth of decay and renewal, of chaos growing into hope; “he pauses as an exhaust pipe, then squirms into the shape of a rabbit snare, then a pissed-on nettle into pink-strangled lamb. He plucks a blackbird from the sky and cracks open the yellow beak. He peers into the ripped face as if it were a clear pond. He...

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Phoenix Dance Theatre
REVIEWS | Par Lorna Irvine

A Sacred Pause

This double bill has similar thematic concerns: group dynamics; ritual, intimacy, humanity. In spite of very different approaches, there's a sense of being at one with, or up against, the elements, of nature and rebirth, and our complicated relationship with the planet. As issues around climate change have been pushed front and centre in the news, these two contrasting pieces feel very much of the zeitgeist.

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Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
REVIEWS | Par Oksana Khadarina

New York City Ballet's Spring

“Balanchine is my life, my destiny.” Suzanne Farrell still talks about George Balanchine in present tense. Hailed as the most influential ballerina of the 20th-century, Farrell has dedicated her career and her life to preserving and promoting the legacy of the great ballet master. In her dancing days, she was New York City Ballet’s brightest star—and one of the most important muses to Balanchine. They formed the greatest artistic partnerships between a choreographer and a dancer in the history of ballet. An epitome of the ideal Balanchine ballerina, Farrell was his perfect creative instrument and a source of inspiration for...

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TU Dance
REVIEWS | Par Rebecca Ritzel

Modern Mashup

Modern dance audiences should learn how to roar. Until then, companies must collaborate with indie rock stars if they want to take bows with fans on their feet screaming.

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Nora Deborah Hay
REVIEWS | Par Sara Veale

Experiments in Time and Space

Eleanor Sikorski, Flora Wellesley Wesley and Stephanie McMann, the charming dancers behind the London-based trio Nora, routinely invite guest choreographers to create new work on them. The approach is useful for showcasing their versatility as performers, particularly their flair for theatre, but makes it difficult to identify stylistic through-lines in their rep. Previous pieces shown at the Lilian Baylis have been hugely disparate, their moods ranging from jovial to irreverent to tranquil. With its abstract, contemplative tenor, the troupe’s newest work, “Where Home Is,” by Deborah Hay, adds another contrasting number to the mix.

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Martha Graham Dance Company
REVIEWS | Par Faye Arthurs

The Eve Project

Janet Eilber, the Martha Graham Company’s artistic director, appeared in the audience with a microphone to give helpful pre-show program notes during her troupe’s run at the Joyce this month. This was a good idea, not only because she is supremely elegant in voice and bearing—she should record books on tape or host an arts talk show—but also because the programs were challenging and a little hand-holding goes a long way. The current season is titled “The EVE Project” in honor of the upcoming centenary of women’s suffrage. Every program explored the power of women and, remarkably, all of the...

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Aurum
REVIEWS | Par Claudia Lawson

Fractured Beauty

We are inside the Sydney Opera House for what is perhaps the most anticipated Australian Ballet performance of the year—opening night of the Australian Ballet’s contemporary triple bill for the 2019 season, “Verve.”

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The Big Picture
REVIEWS | Par Victoria Looseleaf

The Big Picture

It wasn’t exactly Coachella, but the crowds—if not all of the performances—were inspired. Most inspired of all, perhaps, was the producer and champion of dance in Los Angeles, Deborah Brockus. An unsung hero who is not only a choreographer, artistic director and teacher, the fiery redhead is also an indefatigable impresario who continues to make sure that local dance troupes are seen on stages throughout L.A.

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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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