Lifted Spirits
Even at his most straightforward, Paul Taylor often imbued his dances with a sardonic wit. Whether invoking darkness or light, he did so with a wink.
Continua a leggereWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
Mystic, vibrant, violent, feminist—Akram Khan’s newest work is all this and more. The hour-long piece stars Khan himself alongside Ching-Ying Chien and Christine Joy Ritter, and takes its inspiration from Karthika Naïr’s 2015 collection of poems Until the Lions, a reinterpretation of the Mahabharata, the ancient Sanskrit epic. This postmodern narrative layering—in which mythology is reframed through a modern literary lens and then channeled through a prism of contemporary dance, itself informed, in this case, by kathak tradition—lends a rich complexity to the work, one that’s felt in many aspects, from the stratified music to the mosaic sequencing.
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Akram Khan and Ching-Ying Chien in “Until the Lions.” Photograph by Jean Louis Fernandez
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Even at his most straightforward, Paul Taylor often imbued his dances with a sardonic wit. Whether invoking darkness or light, he did so with a wink.
Continua a leggereTalk about Gesamtkunstwerk! Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s “SCAT!...The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar,” is just that—a total work of art: operatic in scale, replete with stellar musicians and singers, and the glorious dancers of Urban Bush Women, the troupe that Zollar founded in 1984, is also storytelling at its best.
Continua a leggereOf all of Shakespeare’s plays, “Hamlet” might seem the hardest to adapt into dance. Its long soliloquies and a titular character stymied by indecision do not immediately scream movement potential.
Continua a leggereComplexions Contemporary Ballet turned 30 this year, and their two-week residency at the Joyce Theater was a party.
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