World-class review of ballet and dance.
In a series called “Just Dance” on Nowness—a site I sometimes visit to see what’s up in the world of “genre busting” dance films that make it onto this stylized platform—I sometimes find little gems that quietly rock my world.
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Back in October, New York City Ballet got a new cowboy. His arrival occurred in the final section of George Balanchine’s “Western Symphony.”
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When Richard Move enters from stage left, their presence is already monumental. In a long-sleeved gown, a wig swept in a dramatic topnot, and their eyes lined in striking swoops, the artist presents themself in the likeness of Martha Graham—though standing at 6’4, they have more than a foot on the late modern dance pioneer.
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Perhaps not since Mikhail Fokine’s 1905 iconic “The Dying Swan” has there been as haunting a solo dance depiction of avian death as Aakash Odedra Company’s “Songs of the Bulbul” (2024).
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Dance, at its best, captures nuance particularly well, allowing us to feel deeply and purely. In its wordlessness, it places a primal reliance on movement and embodied knowledge as communication all its own. It can speak directly from the body to the heart, bypassing the brain’s drive to “make sense of.”
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“Racines”—meaning roots—stands as the counterbalance to “Giselle,” the two ballets opening the Paris Opera Ballet’s season this year.
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“Giselle” is a ballet cut in two: day and night, the earth of peasants and vine workers set against the pale netherworld of the Wilis, spirits of young women betrayed in love. Between these two realms opens a tragic dramatic fracture—the spectacular and disheartening death of Giselle.
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Michele Wiles’ Park City home is nestled in the back of a wooded neighborhood, hidden from the road by pines and deciduous trees that are currently in the midst of their autumn transformations.
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I joined choreographer and artistic director Cathy Marston over a video call at the end of another day of rehearsals.
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Times are hard for ballet. With national funding that favours the new and the bold, ticket prices rising, and accusations of elitism, only a fool would start a company focused on works of the past.
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It was a grand night of show and—well, show more—as eight members of L.A. Dance Project strutted their gorgeous, technically brilliant stuff in the US premiere of “Gems.”
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Before founding the Seoul International Dance Festival, Lee Jong-Ho began his career as a journalist.
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.
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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.
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