World-class review of ballet and dance.
The first thing that you see as you enter the space is the slumped body of performer/dancer Caroline Bowditch on a bright yellow table, looking in a mirror at herself, looking at the audience looking back at her. Such an act is a statement of intent: Edinburgh Fringe sell-out “Falling in Love with Frida” is both self-reflexive portrait and a homage to the great Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54).
Continua a leggere
The two-week fall season of American Ballet Theatre at the Lincoln Center offered the audience the thrill of discovering something new and the joy of reconnecting with much-beloved classics; but most importantly it showed the company in its full power, with the members of the corps de ballet and the soloists sharing center stage with the principal dancers in a variety of short works.
Continua a leggere
For Matisse, who ‘carved’ into colour, blue was the sound of a gong. For Kandinsky, blue was instead evoked by the sound of the cello, which he played. For the poet Arthur Rimbaud, blue was the vowel ‘O’, and it was a “sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds.” Arranged in a line, Rimbaud’s Vowels (1871), from ‘A’ to ‘O’ in colour read: black, white, red, blue, green. On Sunday night, Sydney Dance Company became a body of sound to the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s sounding body. For one night only in Melbourne, a soundscape became a landscape! And blue was...
Continua a leggere
Coloured fanciful and utterly distorted, the window onto the world, trumpeted the circus of former glory: Let me show you the fantastical, long-necked “cameleopard”[note]The “cameleopard” turned out to be a giraffe, as the mysteries of the world moved from the ‘discovered’ realm of explorers to the big top’s window on the world.[/note] of yore; behold “300 dancing girls in entrancing revels.”[note]Ringling Brothers advertisement from 1913 in Dominique Jando, “Wonders of the World Await You,” The Circus 1870s–1950s, ed. Noel Daniel, (Germany: Taschen, 2010), 111[/note] The promise of “the marvels of many nations,”[note]The world map depicted on W. W. Cole’s 1881 circus courier...
Continua a leggere
We could be watching children flit across an imagined stage, constructing a mock performance for their elders or, perhaps, their porcelain dolls. The six dancers here are innocent—ignorant, even. They stretch their arms and snap their fingers. They are focused on perfecting their practice. But they are not trying to charm each other—yet.
Continua a leggere
Paying homage to American composers, a new program of five ballets, titled “Americana x Five” and presented as part of New York City Ballet’s fall season at Lincoln Center, covered an impressively broad range of choreographic and musical styles and moods—from classical to modern to Broadway.
Continua a leggere
On this evening at the Citadel, the audience were turned longways; the brick wall to our right. We looked from tiered seating to a small white square floor with a good number of coloured lights on the ceiling and at the edges. The set up is important because this performance was about memories, memories from childhood, and how you frame a memory can be everything.
Continua a leggere
“The soul desires to dwell with the body because without the members of the body it can neither act nor feel.” –Leonardo da Vinci
Continua a leggere
Finding my seat at Ohad Naharin and Batsheva Dance Company’s “Decadance,” the performance has already begun. In his own private world, on the stage of the State Theatre, Shamel Pitts, in a loose black suit and untucked white shirt, is dancing and I am so glad I have arrived with enough time to catch his playful, loose-kneed, liquid groove. To the side-to-side sway of early samba and late ’50s bossa nova, his moves call to mind how we might all dance if no one were watching. It is the contented, inward, and liberated dance of getting ready for a party,...
Continua a leggere
A kind of transcendent, spiritual healing took place over the weekend when Paris-based Sankai Juku, an eight-member troupe founded by Ushio Amagatsu in 1975—the master is still dancing at 66—wove a spell over those audience members who allowed themselves to be enveloped by a work about time, memory, the body and ritual. Visceral as well as highly cerebral, the 80-minute intermissionless “Umusuna” (it premiered in 2012 in Lyon, France), is a testament to humankind in all of its iterations.
Continua a leggere
Throughout his life George Balanchine had a special affinity for the waltz. In his early works such as “Valse Fantaisie” and “Serenade,” and later in his mature pieces, especially in “La Valse” and “Vienna Waltzes,” and finally in “Davidsbündlertänze,” he imbued the waltz with dramatic meaning, bringing this popular social dance form to new emotional highs.
Continua a leggere
An ubiquitous presence on the cultural scene for many decades, Bill T. Jones, at 63, has conquered Broadway, winning Tonys for “Fela!” and “Spring Awakenings,” as well as the world’s most elite concert halls. Snagging boatloads of awards along the way, including last year’s Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, several Bessies, and a 2010 Kennedy Center Honor, he has also been the artistic director of New York Live Arts since 2011.
Continua a leggereWatching 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,...
Continua a leggereThe choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
Continua a leggere
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.
Continua a leggereAfter 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.
Continua a leggereAn “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
Continua a leggere