Form & Content

A book, physically cut from the pages of another, is the inspiration behind Wayne McGregor’s “Tree of Codes.” Much like the Jonathan Safran Foer book with which it shares its title, McGregor’s work is an experiment in the arrangement of form and content. In collaboration with Jamie xx and artist Olafur Eliasson, who conceived the incredible stage design for “Tree of Codes,” these three artists have created a complex, multi-sensory work of dance and design that turns the act of viewing upon its head.

Grotesque Steps

Snow White outstretched in her glass coffin. A company of black-veiled figures gathered round. Before long she is dragged into life and her gory fate at the hands of her cruel stepmother is played out before the audience.

Sensing Loss

A room, its furniture haphazardly stacked. The armchair lies toppled, the door, placed flat like a table-top, is reimagined as a bed; the cupboards become miniature doorways or upstairs windows through which the company climb.

A Given Light

Death and taxes are the two inevitables in a person’s life. And while taxes are not ever danced about (danced around, perhaps), the subject of death has never been one from which dancers and choreographers have shied away. As part of its “Flower of the Season,” currently in its 14th year, Body Weather Laboratory (a forum for investigating kinesthetic and movement research that was initiated in 1978 by dancer/farmer and improvisateur, Min Tanaka), presented a new work by Oguri, the Japan-born Butoh dancer who leads BWL in Venice, and, to be blunt, never fails to astonish.

A Mixed Bill

In a concert of five works—notable for a lack of discernible style—Jessica Lang Dance roared into Los Angeles last weekend as if it were the second coming. At only six years old, this troupe has somehow catapulted itself to the front ranks of companies.

Blow Up

Waterbeds may have been a 70’s fad, but what about inflatable furniture? For a mere $74.95 (with free shipping, who knew?), Amazon offers the sofa of your dreams, one designed with a “waterproof-flocked top surface and a vinyl bottom that provides an incredibly comfortable sitting surface for any occasion.” For Lionel Popkin, a former Trisha Brown dancer and a choreographer who has mined his Hindu/Jewish roots, memorialized Ruth St. Denis and sautéed onions and curried zucchini in a range of works that satisfied, amused and, if not necessarily provoked, left indelible imagery nonetheless.

What Would Sia Do?

Performer Lucy Gaizely and her ‘tween’ fourteen year old son Raedie sit on stage, clad in flesh-coloured leotards and classic Sia blonde bob wigs. Both are huge fans of the husky voiced Australian singer-songwriter and record producer Sia Furler. Both have a rebellious streak, and a tendency (by their own admissions) to run off at the mouth. Both have soulful eyes, and mischievously twitching mouths. Both are at the juncture in their lives where they are acutely, excruciatingly, embarrassing to each other, often in public.

Humanity Restored

At the end of Batsheva Dance Company’s “Last Work,” a man sits with his back to us and his legs spread, apparently masturbating. Then he rotates to face us and we see he is cleaning a machine gun. Meanwhile, club music pounds, a frenzied crowd runs in circles, lights flash, streamers fly. Ian Robinson drags out a microphone and starts lashing it to the floor with masking tape. Then he screams.

The Sum of its Parts

Beauty, Streamlined

George Balanchine had a special place in his heart for “The Sleeping Beauty.” It was a ballet that he always wanted to stage but never had the means—and the space—to do it properly; and he refused to do it on the budget. “He would put it on only if he could produce it on a scale comparable to “The Sleeping Beauty” whose enchantment he would never forget, the one he had appeared in as a boy in St. Petersburg, where the company had numbered some two hundred dancers and the stage had been grand enough for the most spectacular effects,”...

Space to Explore

In 2015, choreographers Akram Khan, Hofesh Shechter and Lloyd Newman drew ire from the UK dance community for criticising the quality of British contemporary dance training, claiming in a joint statement that UK-trained students “more often than not lack rigour, technique and performance skills.” The following week saw headlines abound, forums buzz with debate and Dance UK chairman Farooq Chaudhry step down from his post after chiming in to question whether UK dance schools are truly “serving their students.”

Belle Redux

“Belle Redux,” choreographed by Ballet Austin artistic director Stephen Mills and premiered by the company in 2015, is a dark reboot of the 18th-century French fairytale “La Belle et la Bête” (Beauty and the Beast). The two-act ballet was commissioned by the 3M corporation as part of a program to fund innovation in the arts (as part of his research, Mills met with 3M researchers and engineers), so it’s no surprise that it is unlike Mills’s other story ballets. Those ballets, including “Taming of the Shrew” (2004), “Hamlet” (2000), and “Cinderella” (1997), are updated and streamlined versions of the classics, but...