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.

Talking Pointes Season 3

Show and Tell

The Guggenheim Museum’s beloved behind-the-scenes New York dance series, Works & Process, was founded in 1984 by philanthropist Mary Sharp Cronson. 

Turbulent and Extraordinary

The 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.”

Contrasting Paths

Few dance companies would dare to put such disparate pieces together. But such is the audacious, experimental spirit of Scottish Ballet.

The Way it Was

Seven dancers reflect on the early days of the School of American Ballet.

Moving Mountains

Batsheva Dance Company, under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin, who led the troupe from 1990 until 2019 (he’s currently House Choreographer), has been an incubator for dancemaking talent. While the names Danielle Agami, Sharon Eyal, and Hofesh Shechter may come to mind, add to that list Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, who met while members of Batsheva, where they fell in love and subsequently married in 2018.

The Me of Today

The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.

Border Crossings

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ current exhibition is a dance epic. Full of tragedy and triumph spanning centuries and the globe, “Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance 1900 – 1955” recenters the story of modern dance around historically marginalized artists often left out of the modern dance canon.

Soul Train

Ah, 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!

Bringing dance history to life

For novelists Eliza Knight, Barbara Quick, and Cathy Marie Buchanan, historical fiction became a window into these subtleties, allowing them to use both research and imagination to depict some of the dance world’s most iconic figures.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

This 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.