A Grand Swan Lake
Like most new adaptations of existing story ballet classics, the world premiere of artistic director James Sofranko’s “Swan Lake” for Grand Rapids Ballet retained the bones of the original it was based on.
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Family Feud
Shakespearean purists, leave your expectations at the door. With his rendition of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” first staged in 2009 to mark the 10th anniversary of K-Ballet Tokyo, Tetsuya Kumakawa plays freely with details from Shakespeare’s tragedy to create a psychological, theatrical study of doomed love.
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Facing the Music
From charming stagings for children to edgy dance theater, Un Yamada Company, a creative collective based in Tokyo, has built a reputation for consistently innovative productions.
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Video Games
For much of “Romeo & Juliet Suite,” Benjamin Millepied’s stripped-down take on the Sergei Prokofiev ballet—billed as a gender-bent, “contemporary, site-specific” version of Shakespeare’s classic—I find myself thinking of a different play by the bard. Specifically, the direction in The Winter’s Tale: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Most of the drama here, after all, happens offstage.
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Coded Messages
Montreal based choreographer and artistic director, Virginie Brunelle’s eponymously named company performed its 2022 “Fables” at Penn Live Arts Zellerbach Theatre series on the brink of Women’s History month.
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New Wave
What distinguishes a dancer from a choreographer? This is, in the end, an empirical question, one that can only be answered in the theatre.
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Americans in Paris
There is something charmingly didactic and intellectually generous about American dance companies touring Europe. At the start of a performance, it is not unusual for a director to step forward and offer a brief introduction, explaining the reasons for the tour and sketching the wider context of the programme. Paris audiences experienced this with the Martha Graham Dance Company last autumn, and now again with Dance Theatre of Harlem. Robert Garland, at the helm of the ensemble, took a moment to anchor the performance in lineage, recalling the company’s origins and its illustrious founder, Arthur Mitchell. As Garland recounted, Mitchell...
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As the Wind Blows
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Winter Series takes its audience on a journey back through time.
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The Right to Party
What are you looking for in a night out in the theatre? Do you seek beauty? The ethereal? That may be the case for most at a ballet, but CCN Ballet de Lorraine’s double bill at the Southbank Centre wants to bring us on a whole trip.
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Feminine Mystique
Dresses, domestic chores, grief. A community of women more feral than feminine. Five performers wear a changing selection of 40 dresses that serve as both costume and prop.
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Coup Versus Calamity
Of the many stylish touches in Scottish Ballet’s “Mary, Queen of Scots,” the titular Tudor’s black pointe shoes are my favourite.
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Heartfelt Moments
The Australian Ballet’s “Signature Works,” as a whole, is a compact and varied celebration of dance in the moment.
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Teenage Angst and Institutions
Watching 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,...
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The Me of Today
The 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.
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America, F**K Yeah
After 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.
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Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup
An “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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