World-class review of ballet and dance.
Over the span of two weeks, New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival brought to its storied stage a wide range of performers from across the globe with different disciplines, perspectives, and movement vocabularies. Its fifth and final program reiterated what it’s all about: exploring, and celebrating, all the different ways we dance.
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Program Four of the 22nd annual Fall for Dance Festival opened with an odd expression of gratitude: “thank you for going through all that you went through to get here,” Michael S. Rosenberg, the President and CEO of New York City Center, told the crowd. The 80th session of the UN General Assembly had shut down much of midtown (even to pedestrians), including the block of 55th street that is home to City Center.
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Recently, I came across a video of a woman having a meltdown at an American Football game. The details are unclear of what exactly went down, but the short clip of this young woman screaming ‘fuck off!’ to the person filming her while being restrained by her parents has garnered millions of views and thousands of derisive comments.
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As Martha Graham so succinctly put it, “The body says what words cannot.” Such was the case when Butoh master Oguri, his wife Roxanne Steinberg, Spanish-born Andrés Corchero and Chinese movement artist Mao, talked up a metaphorical storm in a dance performance with three crack musicians at the Electric Lodge over the weekend.
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The New York City Ballet’s fall season opened with a nicely varied all-Balanchine program. The man had range. The peasant campiness of “Donizetti Variations” led right into the romantic tremolos of “Ballade,” and his abridged version of the dramatic juggernaut “Swan Lake” followed the lone intermission.
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When viewing any work of art, patience may be a necessity, rather than a virtue alone. At least, in New York City Center’s second program for its annual Fall for Dance Festival, instant gratification is discouraged, with a slate of three works that reward viewers as they build, gradually, to ecstasy, horror, and mania.
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At a time when masked ICE thugs are conducting raids up and down California, and the Supreme Court has just decreed the US government can continue arresting people based on the color of their skin, it was entirely appropriate that Rogelio Lopez’s new show opened with a voice over acknowledgement of the “horrors” besieging America’s Latino communities.
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There’s a dash of madness and oodles of heart in this 2022 dance theatre work from the choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan, who takes us on a whistlestop tour through his biography, including his childhood in 1970s Dublin and his breakthrough years as a dancer (and eventual dancemaker) in ‘90s London.
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According to her program notes, Sharon Chohi Kim was inspired by murmurations—“both spontaneous flocks of starlings and a collection of low, continuous sounds”—in her premiere (one-night only) of the same name.
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We enter the cavernous Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory to an oblong stage area flanked by seating on the long sides, emulating the sightline of Anna Wintour and her corps of high couture fashionistas at Fashion Week.
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London City Ballet returned to Sadler’s Wells last weekend with a programme of rarely seen works by Balanchine, Ratmansky, Scarlett, and Melac. Still in the early stages of its revival—the company originally folded in 1996 and relaunched just last year—it was a daring offering, and one that more than delivered.
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Two years ago Jonathan Watkins, choreographer and former dancer with the Royal Ballet, founded a new venture: Ballet Queer.
Continua a leggereLong before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
Continua a leggereIt is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
Continua a leggereAs the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
Continua a leggereOne of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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