World-class review of ballet and dance.
This Friday and Saturday, Boston Dance Theater (BDT) makes its home city debut, with performances at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Mass., presented by World Music/CRASHarts. Although Boston-based, the new company has local and international connections, with co-direction by Boston dancer and director Jessie Jeanne Stinnett, and Itzik Galili, award-winning Dutch-Israeli choreographer.
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In the realm of dance and social change, Sankofa Danzafro is making its powerful choreographic voice well-heard, one continent at a time. The Afro-Colombian company, founded by Rafael Palacios in 1997 on the Pacific coast of Colombia, brings its internationally acclaimed 2010 production “The City of Others” to the Celebrity Series of Boston, to be performed in New England Conservatory’s (NEC) newly completed Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre on November 3 & 4. Performed by a cast of 20 dancers, “City” addresses social issues of wealth disparity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and racism in Colombia in an impactful mix of dance, music and...
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Perched on the back of a chair holding a microphone, right leg extended long, the artist and songwriter Mitski Miyawaki (known mononymously as Mitski) languishes on a barely illuminated stage like a cabaret chanteuse. There’s a tension in her pose; her arms appear relaxed, but every muscle is held. This photograph from her latest tour, which she posted on her Instagram, illustrates a different sort of physicality for the artist—previous show photographs tend to capture her at a standing mic, holding her guitar.
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For a month in summer, across the country from the beating heart of dance in America, New York, the coastal town of Santa Barbara becomes the backdrop for a unique dance residency, known as DANCEworks. Over the last decade, the invitation-only residency hosted by the Lobero Theatre has been instrumental in the forging the artistic careers of some of the country's foremost contemporary choreographers, including Aszure Barton, Kate Weare, Larry Keigwin and more.
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As the sun set on a humid Central Park the first evening of August, Kyle Abraham, the artistic director of A.I.M (a modern, genre-bending dance company formerly known as Abraham.In.Motion), spoke with Gibney’s new curatorial director Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In the few hours before A.I.M’s performance at the Summer Stage, they talked about Abraham’s performance style and influences, his advice to those who started dancing late in life, and his apprehension surrounding a piece he is currently choreographing for New York City Ballet.
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Danielle Rowe was a bright star at the Australian Ballet. Born in Adelaide, Rowe trained at the Australian Ballet School before joining the company in 2001. With extension for days, she rose quickly through the ranks, winning accolades and hearts along the way. She is the only dancer in the company's history to win the Telstra People's Choice award twice, once in 2003 and again in 2005, and she was also the first recipient of the Dorothy Hicks Fund. She attained principal in 2008, and was the apple of company's eye.
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Aaron Robison's dancing has taken him around the world and back again. The former principal at San Francisco Ballet and Houston Ballet soloist returned last year to his native UK to join Tamara Rojo's English National Ballet at the highest rank. He danced in the recent world premiere of William Forsythe's “Playlist (Track 1, 2)”—the first new Forsythe work mounted on a British company in more than two decades, and was the poster-child for the bill, “Voices of America.”
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Born in Cherbourg, northern France, Sophie Martin is one of Scottish Ballet's best-loved dancers and a real secret weapon, having been a principal dancer with the company since 2008. A rare and highly intuitive talent, she combines rich, graceful movement with expressive and versatile acting skills—from Vaudeville-infused choreography to classical, through to more contemporary lines.
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Since 1987, Deborah Abel Dance Company has presented modern dance productions of the highest caliber in Boston, Massachusetts, and abroad. Based in Lexington, MA, the company aims “to remind us of a level of connection with ourselves and others that gets buried in everyday life, and which the arts are uniquely qualified to uncover.”
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“I’m a choreographer because I’m interested in connecting with people, in connecting to audiences, and in connecting with people I’ve worked with—performers—as a way of finding common ground. There’s something about the presence of story,” said internationally acclaimed choreographer, Crystal Pite.
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In an essay, “Grandmother Spider,” writer Rebecca Solnit describes a painting by Ana Teresa Fernandez. The painting shows an image of a woman, hanging out laundry, entirely covered by the sheet she's pinning to the line; only visible her fingertips and below the ankle. She's wearing heels, “as if to go dancing,” Solnit suggests. I was reminded of the photograph Elena Lobsanova, principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada, taken by Karolina Kuras, where Lobsanova is similarly concealed, and revealed by fabric; revealed in outline, as woman, as artist. Yet, this woman wears pointe shoes; she is dancing.
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“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.
Continua a leggereWatching 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,...
Continua a leggereThe 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.
Continua a leggereAfter 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.
Continua a leggereAn “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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