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A No-Tutu Night of Stellar Ballet
REVIEWS | Di Merilyn Jackson

A No-Tutu Night of Stellar Ballet

Philadelphia Ballet’s annual New Works series opened its 2023 season with a program called “Forward Motion” at the Kimmel Cultural Campus’ Perelman Theater last weekend. Over its 60-plus years, the company has seen many changes, including last year’s name change from Pennsylvania Ballet. It now dances its New Works program in the 627-seat theater with superb sightlines and, at intermissions, audience members can mingle in a new café seating area with window views of busy Spruce Street pedestrian traffic.

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Revival: A Meditation on Aging, Dance, & Community
DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | Di Karen Hildebrand

Revival: A Meditation on Aging, Dance, & Community

In spring of 2017, Ellen Graff, Stuart Hodes, and Marnie Thomas Wood, all former members of the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Tony award-winning Broadway choreographer George Faison, set out to make dances for a group of older adults, many of whom had never performed onstage. Josefina Rotman Lyons, an older dancer herself, volunteered to film the project. The resulting documentary, “Revival,” is an honest and engaging take on what it’s like to dance in later life. Now available for streaming at Revivaldocumentary.com, the film won jury and audience awards when it made the rounds of film festivals. At a...

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Free Reign
REVIEWS | Di Rachel Howard

Free Reign

San Francisco Ballet, the U.S.’s oldest professional ballet company and second largest, is entering its 90th season at a moment of profound transition. Helgi Tomasson, artistic director for 37 years, has just handed the reins to Tamara Rojo, who arrives triumphantly after a decade of success raising the profile of the English National Ballet. Aside from both prizing the work of William Forsythe, the two are markedly different in their repertory interests, but Rojo’s programming direction—will the company still dance Balanchine and Robbins?—won’t be known until she announces the 2024 season this April. In the meantime, the company is dancing...

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Horses for Courses
REVIEWS | Di Candice Thompson

Horses for Courses

“Horse, the solos” is yet another new work with a pandemic backstory. Deborah Hay created the work remotely from her living room in Austin, Texas while the dancers of Cullberg were in Stockholm, rehearsing in the studio with Jeanine Durning, who has previously performed in Hay’s works. The premiere, in an empty theater on March 2021, was also atypical and unique to the time; but perhaps, completely aligned with Hay’s postmodern ethos. She writes in a program note:

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Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
REVIEWS | Di Faye Arthurs

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

On Wednesday night, the New York City Ballet premiered “Fortuitous Ash,” the first ballet choreographed by an Asian American woman, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, in the company’s history. It was set to the first score by a female Asian composer, Du Yun, to enter the repertory. Unfortunately, the overdue shattering of dual glass ceilings was more exciting than the work itself. When the curtain fell on the ballet’s final tableau, it came as a surprise; it felt like the piece was finally gearing up to say something. Before the gold fabric dropped, I thought the lights were dimming to signal the end...

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American Romance
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

American Romance

Justin Peck’s new ballet, “Copland Dance Episodes,” is a project Lincoln Kirstein would have embraced. Seventy-five minutes of great, unmistakably American music for a ballet company that in many ways reflects the country; with choreography by a young American dancemaker; framed by stage designs by an artist (Jeffrey Gibson) whose inspiration lies in the symbols and patterns of his Choctaw-Cherokee culture. Creating a new American ballet idiom was the aim of Kirstein’s short-lived company Ballet Caravan, which toured the US and Latin America. And it was Kirstein who, in 1938, commissioned “Billy the Kid” from Aaron Copland, and asked the...

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Ukrainian Giselle
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

Ukrainian Giselle

Shortly after Russia invaded its neighbor, Ukraine, almost a year ago now, Ukrainians began streaming across the borders into Hungary and Poland, and from there into Western Europe. Most were traumatized; some had lost homes; all feared for their lives or their family’s lives. Among these multitudes were dancers and dance students who, like so many refugees, were unsure what would happen next, to them or their country.

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Galván's playground
REVIEWS | Di Cecilia Whalen

Galván's playground

Everything is everything for Israel Galván. A circle of wood is a hockey puck and a stage; a microphone stand is a broom and a drumstick; a hand is a flower, a light switch, and then a hand again in his tremendous “Solo” which was recently presented at Baryshnikov Arts Center.

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Kyle Marshall Channels Matisse
REVIEWS | Di Merilyn Jackson

Kyle Marshall Channels Matisse

Over the decades, the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) has presented music and dance events in the East entrance’s Great Stair Hall as well as in its other spaces. In 2022, the PMA used the new cantilevered Gehry staircase for dance and music. It replaces the small auditorium where I once saw performances of Trisha Brown’s company and others dance. Inaugurating the new space, Philadanco danced memorable pastiches of Merce Cunningham’s early works, and former Cunningham Dance Company member, Melissa Toogood soloed down the staircase to choreography by Pam Tanowitz.

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Dances By Very Young Choreographers
REVIEWS | Di Karen Hildebrand

Dances By Very Young Choreographers

As I watched this evening of works made by 13 choreographers who grew up in the NYC-based after school dance program run by Ellen Robbins, I couldn’t help but think of a heated debate the dance community took up sometime in the aughts over the question, can choreography be taught? Peter Martins, then director of New York City Ballet, claimed it could not. Nearly everyone else disagreed. Surely this Dances By Very Young Choreographers alumni concert erases any lingering doubt. Robbins, now in her 41st year of teaching, produces a public show every year of the remarkable creations of her young makers,...

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The Basics
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

The Basics

The big news before the start of New York City Ballet’s winter season was the announcement that the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky would be joining the company as artist in residence (in September) after the conclusion of his contract with American Ballet Theatre (in June). As many will remember, this was the first New York company Ratmansky choreographed for, before being swooped up by ABT. He has made some of his most innovative works here, including “Russian Seasons,” “Concerto DSCH,” and “Voices,” which returns to the repertory this week.

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In the Mood for Love
REVIEWS | Di Merilyn Jackson

In the Mood for Love

Penn Live Arts’ Dance Theatre of Harlem program this past weekend at Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center braided together an historical, social, racial, cultural, and artistic event. The relationship between the late Dance Theatre of Harlem’s founder, African American dancer Arthur Mitchell (d. 2018) and his mentor and benefactor, choreographer George Balanchine covers all those topics, with a Philadelphia dance community slant that was not lost on the audience.  

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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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