The Walking Dance
The past week has been one of celebration at New York City Ballet. The company is marking seventy-five years of existence with a season devoted to the ballets of its founding choreographer, George Balanchine.
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World-class review of ballet and dance.
The past week has been one of celebration at New York City Ballet. The company is marking seventy-five years of existence with a season devoted to the ballets of its founding choreographer, George Balanchine.
FREE ARTICLEThe late Alvin Ailey famously set his sights on creating “the kind of dance that could be done for the man on the streets, the people.”
Continua a leggereFew dance companies would dare to put such disparate pieces together. But such is the audacious, experimental spirit of Scottish Ballet.
FREE ARTICLEAh, to be a mere dance writer reviewing a world premiere musical with Broadway aspirations! The sheer luxury of letting myriad small problems of dramaturgy and pacing roll right by as you wait in the midst of a pumped-up, dressed-to-the-nines, celebrity-studded audience for the next ensemble dance number that will bring the house down!
Continua a leggereThis year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe recorded its fifth highest attendance in its history, a different reality from the ghostly years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continua a leggereIn the Upstairs Studio at Dancehouse, Rosalind Crisp hands me a small card which invites me to “Please sit where you want and move wherever you want.” She motions to the small light fixture on the wall, should I need it, to illuminate the printed text.
FREE ARTICLEThe porous borders of Rafael Bonachela’s “I Am-Ness,” Marina Mascarell’s “The Shell, A Ghost, The Host & The Lyrebird,” and Antony Hamilton’s “Forever & Ever,” when viewed as a collective, make a visionary trance, as Sydney Dance Company’s triple bill “Ascent” inhabits the stage at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne.
Continua a leggereWhat could be better than a performance of Merce Cunningham’s “Beach Birds” on the actual beach? On a rainy Saturday in late August, the clouds parted in time for a committed crowd of dance lovers to make way by subway and ferry to Rockaway Beach, and gather at Beach Street 108, where a band of confident dancers marched across the sand to perch themselves on the rocks of the jetty.
Continua a leggereJacob’s Pillow, Vail, Saratoga, Kaatsbaan, Lake Tahoe, Nantucket, Fire Island. There are numerous summer festivals that feature world-class dancing in gorgeous natural landscapes around the US But the Battery Dance Festival, now in its forty-second year, is one of the few to offer soft grass and warm breezes as well as the glinting edges of the New York City skyline at sunset.
FREE ARTICLEThe annual Tanz im August, a contemporary dance festival in Berlin, draws in hundreds of spectators and dance companies from around the world. This year, two companies with West African roots proved particularly popular: Nadia Beugré’s Libr’Arts and Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s Faso Dance Theatre.
Continua a leggereWhile the US Congress is still out on summer recess, CONGRESS VIII is alive and kicking, as well as spinning, vamping, breaking, and, well, blowing the roof off of the intimate L.A. Dance Project space, where eight cutting-edge commercial choreographers and a bevy of top-notch dancers dazzled the crowds in three sold-out performances over the weekend.
Continua a leggereFor the fifty-seventh year of its summer residency in July at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), upstate in Saratoga Springs, the New York City Ballet brought three programs.
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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