Looking Back, Moving Forward
One of the most important questions for any director who inherits a dance company from its founding choreographer is how to keep the repertory alive.
Continua a leggereWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
One of the most important questions for any director who inherits a dance company from its founding choreographer is how to keep the repertory alive.
Continua a leggereJennifer Archibald’s choreography credits extend from ballet companies to commercial work, reflecting her signature ability to blend classical dance with hip hop.
Continua a leggereListening to John Cage’s “Three Dances (for prepared piano)” is a wonderfully contradictory experience. The composer disrupts our auditory expectations by placing an assortment of small objects such as erasers, screws, and bolts, among the piano strings. A musician plays the piano in the typical manner, but instead of a harmonic tone, we hear more percussive sounds of kettle drums, timpani, xylophone, tin cans, even bells. One can imagine how an artist like Lucinda Childs, who was part of the Judson Dance Theater radicals in the ‘60s, might be attracted to such a composition. The choreographer is perhaps best known...
Continua a leggereIf ballet and politics were ever a thing, Houston Ballet principal Harper Watters is, perhaps, one of its staunchest advocates.
Continua a leggerePetite in stature, with beautiful, delicate features, Scottish dance artist Suzi Cunningham is nonetheless a powerhouse performer: an endless shape shifter whose work ranges from eerie to strange, to poignant, or just absolutely hilarious.
Continua a leggereOona Doherty is a choreographer that increasingly needs no introduction. The London-born Belfast native, who worked as a dancer across Europe, roared onto the scene as a choreographer with her solo work “Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus,” a searing examination of masculine culture that had the contemporary dance world abuzz.
Continua a leggereIn a career spanning almost 30 years, American dancer-choreographer Trajal Harrell has created a body of work borne of a rich imagination and an enquiring mind.
Continua a leggereIn 2017 Virginie Mécène reimagined the lost Martha Graham solo “Ekstatis.” A review from that Martha Graham Dance Company premiere ended with a strong vote of confidence from critic Gia Kourlas: “Ms. Mécène should keep going.”
Continua a leggereOn one of the first spring-like days this year in NYC, I arrive at Barnard College to observe rehearsal for John Jasperse’s new piece, “Tides,” which will open the LaMama Moves! Dance Festival on April 10.
Continua a leggereHouston Ballet has announced its vibrant programme for 2025-2026, with luminary contemporary ballet choreographer, Alice Topp, formerly of the Australian Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet as a headliner.
Continua a leggereTalk about having a banner year! In 2024 alone, dancer, choreographer and spoken word artist Shamel Pitts not only received a MacArthur Fellowship and the Doris Duke Award, but was also honored with the Knight Choreography Prize.
Continua a leggereSara Veale’s new book Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance (Faber & Faber) examines the lives of nine boldly subversive dancemakers over nearly a century, starting with Isadora Duncan and ending with Pearl Lang. Along the way, it provides a pared but potent mini-history on the emergence of women’s rights.
FREE ARTICLEWatching 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.
Continua a leggereBeneath 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.
Continua a leggere