World-class review of ballet and dance.
All too often it seems the human memory is too short. History is easily forgotten and, in a week where Americans are still processing the results of the presidential election, it is hard not to feel like we are doomed to repeat ourselves.
Continua a leggere
Eyeballs, screaming crones, and bloody axes were projected on a scrim at the top of American Ballet Theater’s new production of “Crime and Punishment.” Not bad for Halloween programming! Yet, despite Isobel Waller-Bridge’s cinematic, pressure-cooker score—which frequently evoked escape room music—there was very little suspense in Helen Pickett and James Bonas’s new narrative full-length.
Continua a leggere
Antony Hamilton is on the move. When he answers my Zoom call, the world-renowned choreographer is at the airport about to board a flight to London. This isn't a vacation, though: the Australian native, who is also the artistic director and co-CEO of Chunky Move, a Victoria-based contemporary dance company, is traveling with the troupe on their latest Europe and U.K. tour.
Continua a leggere
Records are for keeping. A record of the past in permanent form, an account. An official report. The sum of past achievements. The best, most remarkable event of its kind, a world record, no less.
Continua a leggere
For a man considered an icon in Japan’s performing arts world, Tetsuya Kumakawa, in person, is surprisingly down-to-earth.
Continua a leggere
Amelie Ravalec is a London-based French film director and producer, photographer, publisher and colourist. Her internationally screened films include Art & Mind, Paris/Berlin: 20 Years Of Underground Techno and Industrial Soundtrack For the Urban Decay.
FREE ARTICLE
A stool, a clothesline, a hanging sheet. But for these three things, the stage set for “Woolgathering” was largely empty. “Woolgathering” is a ‘spoken word opera’ directed and composed by Oliver Tompkins Ray with choreography by John Heginbotham, inspired by the poetic memoir by Patti Smith.
Continua a leggere
The American Ballet Theatre’s opening bill was not a hole-in-one, but the ideas behind the programming were sound: feature a new work that builds upon company traditions (Gemma Bond’s “La Boutique”), push the dancers in a different style by a hot choreographer (Kyle Abraham’s “Mercurial Son”), and show off the troupe’s prodigious technical chops in a grand manner (Harald Lander’s “É tudes”).
Continua a leggere
It’s not every contemporary choreographer who is able to cross over into directing large-scale opera. But that’s precisely what Kitty McNamee has done.
Continua a leggere
During opening night of Ballet West’s performance of Val Caniparoli’s “Jekyll & Hyde,” my dad turned to me and said, “I remember you once told me that dancers are telling stories with their bodies.
Continua a leggere
In a small white studio space, the line between performers and audience is being blurred. Choreographer Meytal Blanaru, born in Israel but now Brussels based, has devised this piece along with the dancers, and it’s multifaceted indeed, a study in hope and community spirit, with many playful detours along the way.
Continua a leggere
Staging the biographical details of someone’s life is by no means an easy task; doing so for a figure who was complex and controversial amplifies this charge to a new level.
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