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Sara Mearns in George Balanchine's Walpurgisnacht Ballet. Photo Paul Kolnik
REVIEWS | Di Oksana Khadarina

Mozartiana

A dance of transcendent beauty, “Mozartiana,” set to the musical suite of the same title by Tchaikovsky, was George Balanchine’s final masterpiece. The ballet was created for Suzanne Farrell, his last and greatest muse; in a way “Mozartiana” was his farewell gift to her. Choreographed in 1981 to commence the New York City Ballet Tchaikovsky Festival, this ballet was also a heartfelt homage to Tchaikovsky himself, whom Balanchine all his life regarded as a mentor and inspiration. “Balanchine at the age of seventy-seven had given us a vision of heaven as he interpreted it from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘on earth...

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Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
REVIEWS | Di Victoria Looseleaf

Astonish Me

True to its mission of being an artistic collective, and loosely based on the principles of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, where great talents of the day were brought together to collaborate, L.A. Dance Project, founded in 2012 by Benjamin Millepied and a core group of artists, composers and designers, is proving its mettle. In its debut at the Wallis (a beautiful, intimate space for dance and an excellent fit for the nine-member company), the troupe brought two tried-and-tested goodies, and one U.S. debut that was breathtaking in its choreographic detail and jaw dropping in scope and execution.

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Meg Wolfe
REVIEWS | Di Victoria Looseleaf

Disco Odyssey

Meg Wolfe has tackled various subjects in her choreographic evolution, including a hat-tip to film noir (2008’s “Eleven Missing Days”) and fantasies of a post-apocalyptic renewal (2007’s “The Return of Captain Ladyvoice”). Since moving to Los Angeles from New York in 2004, the 47-year old with the elfin face and neo-bobbed hair has also amassed an impressive following among scenesters, envelope-pushing terpsichoreans and all stripes of gays and transpeople (and any and all combinations thereof).

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Frederick Ashton
REVIEWS | Di Sara Veale

Ashton on the Town

Frederick Ashton’s much-loved “Rhapsody” is perhaps epitomised by the scene in which six male dancers hold the lead aloft and parade him around like a king, a ring of glittering ballerinas encircling the reverent display. The plotless ballet, created as a birthday present for the Queen Mother in 1980 and presented here as part of a double bill celebrating the Royal Ballet’s founding choreographer, is all about spectacle—in fact, Ashton specifically enlisted Mikhail Baryshnikov, Russian virtuoso extraordinaire, for the starring role to ensure the piece had a central spark powerful enough to ignite the blaze of majesty he envisioned.

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Akram Khan
REVIEWS | Di Sara Veale

Fire and Ice

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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Ana María Alvarez
REVIEWS | Di Victoria Looseleaf

Rain Dance

Inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Oya, the Afro-Cuban deity of, among other elements, wind, storms, fertility and magic, Ana María Alvarez’ world premiere, “Agua Furiosa,” was, in fact, frantic, frenetic and infuriating—to this reviewer. Alvarez, a Cuban-American in her late 30s, has been crafting the soggy opus for more than two years. Possessed of the DNA activist gene (her parents were both union organizers and also involved in civil rights), Alvarez founded CONTRA-TIEMPO (literally, “against the times”), in 2005.

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Scottish Ballet in Christopher Hampson’s “Cinderella.” Photograph by Andy Ross
REVIEWS | Di Lorna Irvine

Grace and Pistachio Flavour

Chief executive and artistic director of Scottish Ballet, Christopher Hampson, has spoken of a desire to reimagine the classic fairytale as being a place populated by people who are “not defined by material things, or by who they have married.” Job done. It's an idiosyncratic, witty foray into scenes evocative of MGM's golden age, with a pinch of film noir at the start and an undercurrent of German Expressionism also thrown in, but moreover, his main remit is to weave a morality tale of eschewing worldly goods for inner beauty. The disparity between rich and poor is alluded to in...

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Troy Schumacher
REVIEWS | Di Madison Mainwaring

Growing Pains

This fall, NYCB’s bill of newly commissioned works was something of a gamble. Save for Justin Peck, the choreographers were dark horses, relative unknowns outside of their company and locale. I suspect this has to do with age more than anything else; four of the five (the exception being Kim Brandstrup) have yet to reach their thirtieth birthday. Peck, Myles Thatcher, Robert Binet, and Troy Schumacher are young men with corps de ballet experience (Peck was only recently promoted to the soloist rank) who have been given a platform, one of the most prestigious in the ballet world, in order...

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The Nutcracker
REVIEWS | Di Victoria Looseleaf

A New Nutcracker

It’s no secret that “The Nutcracker,” a children’s book written by E.T.A. Hoffman and originally choreographed in 1892 by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov to the glorious music of Tchaikovsky, has been a cash cow for ballet troupes worldwide—at least since George Balanchine created his beloved version in 1954 for New York City Ballet, with other major (and minor) companies following suit.

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New Breed
REVIEWS | Di Claudia Lawson

New Breed

“New Breed” is the brain child of Sydney Dance Company's artistic director Rafael Bonachela. Now in its second year, the “New Breed” programme gives four up-and-coming choreographers the opportunity to create works on the dancers of the Sydney Dance Company. For these chosen four, “New Breed”provides a springboard to transition from dancer to choreographer. The initiative comes with all the creative support and infrastructure of the Sydney Dance Company—the choreographers have access to dancers, studios, costume and lighting design, and all four works premiere at Sydney’s Carriageworks theatre. The concept is beautifully simple, but still astonishingly rare in performing arts.

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Russell Maliphant
REVIEWS | Di Rachel Elderkin

Dancing in the Light

“Conceal | Reveal” marks the twentieth anniversary of the collaboration between choreographer Russell Maliphant and lighting designer Michael Hulls. The programme featured two new works alongside their past work, “Broken Fall” originally performed by Sylvie Guillem and BalletBoyz. Bayerisches Staatsballett also makes a guest appearance with “Spiral Pass,” a work Maliphant was commissioned to create on the company in 2014.

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Bangarra Dance Theatre
REVIEWS | Di Claudia Lawson

Ochres

“Ochres” was a watershed production for Bangarra Dance Theatre, Australia’s first Indigenous dance company. First performed in 1994, it was a defining moment for the then fledgling company, leading to sell-out shows and critical acclaim. At the time, the work was a bold statement, blending traditional and contemporary dance, while bravely highlighting modern day struggles overlaid on a rich cultural history. Two decades later, and the company’s artistic director, the indomitable Stephen Page, has revived the iconic work in to mark both the production and the company’s 21-year milestone.

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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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