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Heavenly Dancing
REVIEWS | Di Rachel Howard

Heavenly Dancing

It’s rare to encounter an artistic director’s program note offering more than generic greetings, yet I always read Peter Boal’s opening thoughts before pressing “play” on a Pacific Northwest Ballet program. (Happily the company has continued to offer a digital season alongside its return to the live stage.) To introduce this second mixed-rep bill, Boal could have angled for “relevance” and stressed how Ulysses Dove’s “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven” connects to our moment of grief in the wake of the pandemic. But Boal is more personal and specific and less crudely calculating than that. He writes instead...

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Dancing with Joy
REVIEWS | Di Victoria Looseleaf

Dancing with Joy

Emerging from the global pandemic, which brought isolation, fear and, most tragically, death to so many, has indeed given us new reasons to enjoy simple things—the human connection, a hug, embracing hope again. And so it was with dancer/choreographer Danielle Agami’s world premiere, “Joy.” Performed by her Los Angeles-based Ate9 troupe at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (a special shout-out to the Wallis’ artistic director Paul Crewes, who departs his position at the end of the year but who has given local dance a position of prominence over his tenure), the work lived up to its name...

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Red and Black
REVIEWS | Di Valentina Bonelli

Red and Black

Entire generations have grown up reading Le Rouge et le Noir, finding in the 1830 novel by Stendhal a Bildungsroman and in Julian Sorel an alter ego for our own aspirations of career and love. For those who would like to find again that esprit de jeunesse, Pierre Lacotte’s “Le Rouge et le Noir” is a ballet not to be missed. Obviously, they have to be fond of those grands ballets in classic style that no choreographer stages anymore. Monsieur Lacotte is probably the last one, a specialist of that kind, who at 90 years of age was able to...

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An American Icon
REVIEWS | Di Ilena Peng

An American Icon

As Tony Bennett sang, the curtain rose on silhouetted dancers dressed in all black and in whimsical monochrome polka-dotted tutus. Then the three female leads in Jessica Lang’s new work “ZigZag” whirled onstage in bursts of yellow, blue and pink tulle designed by Wes Gordon for Carolina Herrera. What came next was an infectiously joyful, yet nostalgic performance, filled with its fair share of jazzy shimmies and finger snaps.

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Time for Love
REVIEWS | Di Victoria Looseleaf

Time for Love

It’s no accident that dancer/choreographer Micaela Taylor named her troupe The TL Collective, the ‘TL’ short for ‘To Love,’ because watching this standout performer in her own works, one instantly falls in love with her. Indeed, with Taylor, who is decidedly the complete package, another word comes to mind: Star, with a capital ‘S.’ And so it was that this magnetic performer and her troupe of seven shredded the stage at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Friday with three works, including a world premiere, “Time.”

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Joy, Perseverance, and Power
REVIEWS | Di Candice Thompson

Joy, Perseverance, and Power

Opening night of Martha Graham Dance Company’s run at the Joyce Theater was a momentous occasion. Not only did this engagement mark the MGDC’s return to live performance in its home city—a milestone nearly every other marquee company based in New York City has been celebrating this fall—it was also the start of the company’s 96th season. On Tuesday October 26, 2021, the company dancers were in fine form despite more than a year of pandemic protocols, carrying on Martha Graham’s legacy with technical virtuosity and dramatic intensity.

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Full Bloom
REVIEWS | Di Faye Arthurs

Full Bloom

Every year, City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival offers true medley programming, with hit-or-miss results. But the fifth and final program of this year’s festival was strong from start to finish. Talented young Roman Mejia (New York City Ballet’s newest soloist) kicked off the show by stepping into “Fandango,” a gypsy solo Alexei Ratmansky choreographed for Wendy Whelan in 2010. It has also been danced before by Sara Mearns, but Mejia is the first male to take it on. It was somewhat reworked for Mejia—the women did not perform such aerial manèges—but many of the steps were left unaltered and...

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Dancing in Hope
REVIEWS | Di Merilyn Jackson

Dancing in Hope

Ronen (Roni, as he likes to be known) Koresh premiered “TikVAH,” his first work back at Philadelphia’s Suzanne Roberts Theatre since 2019. Two years is a long time in a dancer’s short performance life. Tikvah may mean hope in Hebrew, but it comes from a root word that means to bind or to wait for. In celebrating the 30th year of Koresh Dance Company he kept his 10-member troupe and dance school together through the Covid-19 ordeal by keeping them socially distanced yet moving and in dancing shape in their own Rittenhouse Square studio. No one guessed how long they’d...

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New Beginnings
REVIEWS | Di Merilyn Jackson

New Beginnings

What better way to review a newly named ballet company than on World Ballet Day? At almost 60 years old, Pennsylvania Ballet recently changed its name to Philadelphia Ballet. Founded by the late Barbara Weisberger with a Ford Foundation grant in the early ‘60s, it inspired the NEA program that funded regional ballet companies around the country. Weisberger passed in December 2020 and the ballet honored her in its 2021 digital online series. During Covid, artistic director Ángel Corella and the board of directors felt it was time to put a more metropolitan brand on the company.

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A Last High Kick
REVIEWS | Di Ilena Peng

A Last High Kick

Principal dancer Maria Kowroski's first entrance of Sunday’s program was just walking slowly toward principal Russell Janzen in George Balanchine’s “Chaconne.” The audience roared until they reached each other at center stage. That scene was repeated over and over Sunday afternoon, the loudest of them as the curtain went up after the end of “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.”

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Falls + Dance
REVIEWS | Di Faye Arthurs

Falls + Dance

Chuck Schumer appeared at the opening night of the 2021 Fall for Dance Festival to proudly declare that the Save Our Stages Act passed by the Senate last year rescued all the arts in New York City. I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate, but I didn’t begrudge him the victory lap. And with the return of the live, giddy crowds to City Center for the FFDF, it did feel like business as usual in the dance world for a blissful moment. But when the curtain went up to reveal a massive triangular scaffold with three people dressed as ersatz superheroes...

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Singular and Strong
REVIEWS | Di Rachel Howard

Singular and Strong

“Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere March 13, 2020,” reads the program note for Alejandro Cerrudo’s “One Thousand Pieces,” and therein lies a pandemic tale. The company premiere of Cerrudo’s ballet was supposed to have taken place on that date last year. But on March 12, 2020, as news of the strange new virus spreading through Seattle filled airwaves and iPhones, artistic director Peter Boal and the PNB staff and board gathered to face what was coming. They filmed the dress rehearsal of “One Thousand Pieces.” And the next day, instead of opening night, the theater fell dark.

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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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