An Inventive Nutcracker
For me, an undeniable highlight of Christmas 2024 was watching Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl with my family.
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Notes for the New Year
My favorite books of 2024 offer dance history from the artist’s point of view. Perhaps there is nothing too unusual about this, and yet, something about this trend feels special as we step with trepidation into the first days of 2025.
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The Drama with Lloyd Knight
Lloyd Knight, Principal Dancer entering his 20th season with the Martha Graham Dance Company, debuts his first one-man show as part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim on January 13th.
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High Hopes
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual December residency at City Center featured four world premieres. I caught two: Hope Boykin’s “Finding Free” and Lar Lubovitch’s “Many Angels.”
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Best of the West
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” so began Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities.
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Wicked Moves with Christopher Scott
Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) steps down the steps, rests her hat on the floor and takes in the Ozdust Ballroom in Wicked. She elevates her arm, bringing her bent wrist to her temple.
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A Bug Menagerie
The Sarasota Ballet does not do a “Nutcracker”—they leave that to their associate school. Instead, over the weekend, the company offered a triple bill of which just one ballet, Frederick Ashton’s winter-themed “Les Patineurs,” nodded at the season.
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Hard (Nut) Facts
I couldn’t stop thinking about hockey at the New York City Ballet’s “Nutcracker” this year, and not only because the stage appeared to be made of ice: there were a slew of spectacular falls one night I attended.
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Other Delights
Last week, during the first Fjord Review Dance Critics’ Festival, Mindy Aloff discussed and read from an Edwin Denby essay during “The Critic’s Process” panel.
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A Sweet Nutcracker
There are “Nutcrackers,” and then there’s American Contemporary Ballet’s “The Nutcracker Suite.”
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The Other Side
Is it as traditional as there being “The Nutcracker” or the British pantomime on at Christmas time, for there to be an alternative offering?
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Song and Dance
To paraphrase that great song from “A Chorus Line,” the Los Angeles-based BodyTraffic gave a concert that might best be summed up as, “Dancers 10, Choreographers, well, 3.”
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Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
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Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
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School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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