World-class review of ballet and dance.
“When they said glitter, I immediately thought—no,” photographer Karolina Kuras was somewhat wary of truckloads of glitter entering her Toronto studio for a photoshoot with Brent Parolin, second soloist of the National Ballet of Canada. And yet, the results are nothing less than, well, sparkling. Makeup and styling by Ashley Readings.
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Aretha Franklin’s voice surges warm and bosomy from the sound system, singing the 1960’s Sam Cooke classic, A change is gonna come . . . As she sings, two dancers cavort below, an inane little chirping noise intrudes, and what we gather are tweets from the choreographer David Roussève appear above, emoticons and all. His favorite note from Aretha is about to come, he tweets. Listen for it . . . That one. The one that makes him feel mmmm. The way Wendy and Ryan are dancing, that’s the way that note makes him feel, he says. And he goes...
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A world premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s “Songs of Bukovina” was one of the highlights of American Ballet Theatre’s fall season at the Lincoln Center. The ballet is choreographed to the commissioned score by Leonid Desyatnikov, namely a selection of preludes from his newly-minted, incandescent Bukovinian Songs (24 Preludes for Piano). (The music in its entirety will be premiered in Russia next spring.) This is the sixth ballet of Ratmansky-Desyatnikov creative team and the third with the entirely new music. Previously, the choreographer made two ballets: “Lost Illusions” (2011) for Bolshoi Ballet and “Opera” (2013) for La Scala Ballet, for which...
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In early October, Princeton University hosted A Festival of the Arts, celebrating the grand opening of the university’s impressive new Lewis Arts complex. Presented by the Department of Music and the Lewis Center for the Arts, the festival boasted over 100 events in music, art, and dance, including daily sold-out performances of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Salva Sanchis’s “A Love Supreme.”
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Gobsmacked by beauty and the timelessness of ballet! Indeed, what a gift it was to witness terpsichorean history come alive—if only for several hours—when Segerstrom Center for the Arts presented the Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra as its season opener in an all-Fokine program.
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A performance that took place in a 7 x 4 metre box, covered in two-way mirrored Plexiglas film, offered the promise of, as then billed, “two bodies, a drum kit, and a melody.” Two years later, the melody has gone, but the two bodies and kit remain; “by doing away with narrative and melody, and making a constantly 'in flux' relationship to the public, attention is focused on the agency of the drumming and dancing and the audience.” Presented at the Substation as part of this year’s Melbourne Festival, the chance to walk around said mirrored box promised a little...
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New York City Ballet’s program titled “Here/Now” included a selection of works the company presented during its last season’s spring festival of the same title. This was a winning quadruple bill on all levels, featuring ballets by some of the most prominent choreographers working today: Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, and Justin Peck.
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At its previous performances in North Carolina and New York, Kate Weare’s commanding “Marksman” played in large proscenium theaters, where Clifford Ross’s backdrops of black and grey images suggesting cresting tsunamis loomed high above the six dancers. The effect was lost last weekend in the black box ODC Theater where I saw “Marksman” on the San Francisco stop of its yearlong tour. Here, the dancers were practically near enough to touch, and Ross’s totemic scrolls did not seem so overpowering. But while Weare herself seemed to lament the shift in scale during Friday’s post-performance talk, I wouldn’t have had it...
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What role do imitation and “borrowing” play in developing an artist’s oeuvre? And how, as a viewer, do you separate your perceptions of an artist’s choreography from your awareness of theatrical trends?
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On the surface, these two ballets could not be more contrasting. Yet, what thematically links them is the iconoclastic approach of both Sir Kenneth MacMillan's choreography (this production marks twenty five years of his passing) and the bold invention of Scottish Ballet's own Artistic Director Christopher Hampson—not to mention, of course, the “The Rite Of Spring's” notorious first Parisian performance in 1913, which caused riots.
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“Can an intelligent being comprehend the instructions to make itself?” This is one of the questions at the heart of “Autobiography,” Wayne McGregor’s newest work and the latest in a line of ventures reflecting his fascination with science, particularly genetics. (Just this summer the choreographer teamed up with the Genetics Clinic of the Future to have his entire genome sequenced.) Here ten dancers from McGregor’s London-based company probe his personal memories as well as his actual genetic code to weave a helix of memory, contemplation and speculation.
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When terpsichorean stars align, magic can happen. Such is the case with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, a troupe founded 40 years ago by Lou Conte and directed by the indefatigable Glenn Edgerton since 2009. Edgerton comes to his role with a prestigious pedigree: Having danced 11 years with the Joffrey Ballet before taking the helm at Netherlands Dance Theater for a decade, his curatorial skills are in full flower as he and his 16-member troupe celebrate Hubbard’s four-decade anniversary.
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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