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A Gift for the Season
REVIEWS | Di Karen Greenspan

A Gift for the Season

Considering the ongoing conversation regarding the true scope of dancers’ labor and the role they play in a choreographer’s dance making process, I mused about the Gibney Dance Company’s announcement of their recent New York Live Arts season (December 13-17) presenting “Yag 2022,” a reimagining of Ohad Naharin's acclaimed 1996 work for Batsheva Dance Company. “Yag” is a family memoir—come to life in the Gaga-trained bodies (and minds) of the Batsheva dancers. What would happen when such a collaborative and personal work was restaged on a completely different company of dancers?

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Romancing to Robbins
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

Romancing to Robbins

While practically every other ballet company is putting on a “Nutcracker,” Sarasota Ballet has decided to present a program of chamber ballets in the weeks before the end of the year. And why not? It’s a triple bill, with two works by Jerome Robbins (“In the Night” and “Fancy Free”) and, in the only concession to the season, Frederick Ashton’s picture postcard “Les Patineurs,” set at a Victorian skating rink. Given the scale of the theater (the Sarasota Opera House) and of these works, it is a perfect program for getting to know the company better, with the luxury of...

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Rome and Jewels Redux
REVIEWS | Di Merilyn Jackson

Rome and Jewels Redux

“Romeo and Juliet” was a favorite in high school lit-class, a real two-hanky play. My first experience of any version of the play on stage was with choreographer John Cranko’s version at the Academy of Music in 1969. I knew Prokofiev’s score, especially “Dance of the Knights,” where the Capulets and Montagues curtsy and circle one another. The sinister music trumpeted that they would soon be killing each other. Around the same time Franco Zefferelli’s dance-heavy film came out. Both Cranko’s dance and Zeferrelli’s film were full of pomp and ceremony, velvets, pearls, crimsons, swords, and sumptuous beyond words. So,...

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Think Pink
REVIEWS | Di Claudia Lawson

Think Pink

Artistic director Rafael Bonachela’s remarkable “New Breed” has hit the stage at Sydney’s Carriageworks for its 9th year. Each year the initiative provides a springboard for four budding choreographers to create a brand new work—the hope for many is to establish themselves as choreographers. Miraculously, the initiative has somehow survived the Sydney lockdowns and is now a mainstay of the company's performance season. The initiative comes with all the creative trimmings and infrastructure of Sydney Dance Company—the chosen four have access to company dancers, studios, composers, costume, and lighting designers. The concept is wonderfully simple, but rare in the performing...

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Let it Slide
REVIEWS | Di Karen Hildebrand

Let it Slide

The last time I saw Michelle Dorrance perform in person was in her breakthrough production of “Soundspace” (2013). I remember my view from the risers at the short end of St. Mark’s Church, where she had gathered what seemed surely every available tap and body percussion artist in NYC. I remember the generosity with which she showcased her fellow artists—and also, socks. Imagine rhythm tappers wearing socks! It was an experiment that both paid tribute to the tap great, Jimmy Slyde, and protected the wood floors of the historic building. That show raised Dorrance’s star. She had already been recognized...

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Nuts and Bolts
REVIEWS | Di Faye Arthurs

Nuts and Bolts

Making an annual visit to the New York City Ballet’s “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®” is like tuning into a balletic State of the Union address. This is the time of year when City Ballet asserts cultural and commercial dominance (it has the preeminent “Nut” in the marketplace) and company patriotism burns brightest (in advertising, anyway—just look at all those possessives and the trademark in the title). But though this oft-imitated production is copyrighted and tightly regulated, it is not inalterable. Like the Constitution, it is amendable and evolves with the times. Most of the changes have been positive: in recent...

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Sunburst and Snowblind
REVIEWS | Di Lorna Irvine

Sunburst and Snowblind

With frost on the ground, and a nip in the air at minus 7 degrees, “The Snow Queen” is back again for another spin—what new approaches and tweaks can we expect from this evergreen winter ballet? Well . . . there's a carnivalesque approach to this particular iteration, from Scottish Ballet's artistic director Christopher Hampson, with all of the well-known beats ramped up to campy, but exuberant, levels. The emphasis on disruption of the main narrative is a welcome choice, as the two leads—Anna Williams' Gerda and Bruno Micchiardi as Kai—while sweet, are a little bland and saccharine—at least, initially....

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Be Like Water
REVIEWS | Di Karen Hildebrand

Be Like Water

Given the title, “Rivulets,” I’m thinking about water even before the stage lights go up. So I’m primed to view the opening tableau as a strand of bedraggled seaweed washed ashore: eight dancers, sprawled in a languid glowing heap of green, blue, and black. After a short period of stillness, the painterly tableau dissolves into distinct individuals who interact. They variously bow, lunge forward, recoil. Their heads jerk forward and yank back repeatedly. Tight turns open out, then reverse, as if tossed this way and that in the current.

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Dreamy Episodes
REVIEWS | Di Candice Thompson

Dreamy Episodes

Evoking its title, Tere O’Connor’s “Rivulets” trickled through a series of dreamy episodes where movement, music, and gathering collided with a quieter sense of interiority. The world premiere at Baryshnikov Arts Center on Wednesday evening was an unfussy affair, staged in a studio with a light grid and a few rows of seating on either side of the floor. Without a discernible plot or recognizable story, the dancers communicated with one another in streams of expressive and at times, exhausting, choreography (to which they received collaborative credit).

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Daring Dances
REVIEWS | Di Merilyn Jackson

Daring Dances

Although audience members shivered in the first cold night as they entered one of Philadelphia’s finest downtown performance palaces, the Wilma Theater, Ballet X offered them a program of warm memories, thoughtful reflections and a touch of nostalgia on November 30.

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Elvis Sighting at the Joyce
REVIEWS | Di Faye Arthurs

Elvis Sighting at the Joyce

Dwight Rhoden might be the only person in the world who likes a high leg as much as I do, so I have a fondness for his work. Wacked-out extensions are the defining feature of the troupe he co-directs with Desmond Richardson, the Complexions Contemporary Ballet. But aside from this undeviating, extreme pliancy, the Complexions roster is one of the most diverse groups working today in terms of race and gender, and especially size and shape. There’s Jillian Davis, who towers even on flat, at 6’2”, and whose powerful, shapely legs could’ve used a bigger stage. And then there’s Vincenzo Di...

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Old Love, New Love
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

Old Love, New Love

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is once again ensconced New York City Center for its annual December season. The programs offer the usual mix of dances by Ailey, pieces by twentieth-century masters—which this year include Twyla Tharp’s “Roy’s Joys”—and new works commissioned from contemporary choreographers. And, of course, “Revelations.” At a recent performance, the patron behind me sighed unhappily upon hearing that Ailey’s 1960 masterpiece was not on the program.

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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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