World-class review of ballet and dance.
Watching Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan in “13 Tongues,” two impressions dominate. The first is that the dancers use their bodies like calligraphers, producing a constant trailing of elegant lines that linger in the mind’s eye like brushstrokes. The second impression is that, as a group, the dancers roil like mercury around the stage, a soloist or duo pulling away only to be sucked back into the mass via forces of atomic attraction.
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Dancers in mushroom hats frolicking in a forest; hands cupped around a sapling waiting for a lake’s lapping waters; a sandy pas de deux divided by a volleyball net; adolescent girls reaching earnestly toward the sky. These are some of the many impactful moments in Art 2 Action, Artists Climate Collective’s most recent film series aiming to bridge the gap between dance and climate change. The collection—featuring choreography by Cameron Fraser-Monroe, Yuri Zhukov (with direction by Emma Rubinowitz), Makino Hayashi, and Darian Kane—is available for viewing on Vimeo through November 7, with proceeds going to partner organizations GRID Alternatives, Sunrise...
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Two nights before I saw the third and final instalment of DanceX, presented by the Australian Ballet, a juvenile Bar-tailed Godwit set the world record for continuous flight, flying 13,560km (8,435 miles) from Alaska to Tasmania.[note]Graham Readfearn, ‘Bar-tailed godwit sets world record with 13,560km continuous flight from Alaska to southern Australia’, The Guardian, October 27, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/bar-tailed-godwit-sets-world-record-with-13560km-continuous-flight-from-alaska-to-southern-australia, accessed October 30, 2022.[/note] Satellite tag number 234684 completed their marathon voyage in 11 days. By shrinking their internal organs to make room for fat stores, Bar-tailed Godwits are astonishing.
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Talk about in-your-face ballet! “Be Here Now,” a one-hour abstract work choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, who founded his L.A. Dance Project in 2012, was thrilling, energetic and insanely beautiful. Under the banner of “Dance Reflections,” and presented in partnership with Van Cleef & Arpels (would that the French luxury jewelry company spread its baubles/euros around to more L.A.-based dance troupes), the company premiered the work in June at its black box studio in the City of Angels and was mounted there again last week. (The troupe also did a brief stint at Paris’ Théatre du Châtelet in mid-October, when “Be...
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In the second week of its fall season at Lincoln Center, American Ballet Theatre introduced a series of mixed bills that combine new and older works. The elder statesman here is Frederick Ashton. His ballet “The Dream,” from 1964, is a miraculous work that combines the most refined comedic timing—all musically-based—with amazing narrative clarity and gorgeous through-the-body movement that sends shivers through the spine. How did Ashton accomplish something so full in just one act? Aspiring choreographers should be forced to study “The Dream” in school, the way sculptors study statuary.
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At the Koch Theater, it is fairly easy to catch a ballet version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” set to Mendelssohn. Likewise, a silly, yet bravura, dance loosely scaffolded by The Four Seasons is regularly programmed there. But these statements are only true when the choreographers are George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, not Frederick Ashton and Alexei Ratmansky. During week two of American Ballet Theater’s Fall Season at the Koch, it was a little surreal, yet illuminating, to see variations on perennial New York City Ballet rep more regularly performed across the plaza at the Metropolitan Opera House. ...
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There's a clip from “Twyla Moves,” the PBS American Masters episode about Twyla Tharp, of Tharp rehearsing with dancers in Central Park. It's from 1969: They were wearing regular street clothes, kicking and turning, throwing their bodies up and across, down and around as baby carriages, football players, and police on horseback meandered through them. Indifferent towards aesthetic perfection or public perception (not to mention whether or not their sneakers got stained), the dancers launched themselves through the park, falling and flying to the point of exhaustion.
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The night begins with a homophone. With a playful swap of the knowing word ‘knew’ for a word that sounds the same when you speak or read it, but which now conjures up things shiny and in the present: ‘new.’ Johan Inger’s high-spirited, wistful memory, “I New Then” premiered in 2012, but it looks back further still, to what we now know was a ‘new’ time, one “that was both pure and simple but with the distinct challenges of becoming an adult.”[note]Johan Inger, “I New Then” choreographer’s statement, https://www.johaninger.com/#/i-new-then, accessed October 21, 2022.[/note] With an invitation to “walk and talk...
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Fouad Boussouf’s “Näss” (the title means “people,” in Arabic) is a dance for seven men from his company Le Phare, set to an hour’s worth of intensely rhythmic, often trance-like music. The men are strong, and focused, at times vulnerable, at times aggressive, but never less than compelling. As their bodies submit to, and then begin to bend, the rhythm, they seem to take part in rituals, either private or shared. Eventually each man peels away from the group and erupts into a solo—if it were a play, these would be monologues. Each seems to express a different emotion: solitude,...
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When the Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to Lincoln Center November 1-13, iconic Taylor dances like “Esplanade” and “Company B” share the stage with world premieres from Amy Hall Garner and newly-appointed resident choreographer Lauren Lovette. Other highlights of the programming include a special evening celebrating the collaboration between Taylor and the painter Alex Katz, Kurt Jooss’s classic anti-war ballet “The Green Table,” and live music from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by maestro David LaMarche.
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A breath of fresh, brilliant, joyous—and much needed—air blew into BroadStage on Thursday for the world premiere of Mark Morris’ “The Look of Love.” Co-commissioned by a national consortium of arts presenters, including BroadStage, the work is set to music from the vast cannon of multi-Grammy-award winning pop composer and songwriter, 94-year old Burt Bacharach, with lyrics by his frequent collaborator, Hal David, who died in 2012.
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Alexei Ratmansky’s ballet “Whipped Cream,” which is wrapping up a week-long run at American Ballet Theatre, is the very opposite of a cautionary tale. A young boy gorges on whipped cream, only to be felled by a belly ache. He is dragged off to the hospital, where he is tormented by a bulbous-headed doctor and hypodermic-wielding nurses. But then, lo and behold, a princess conveyed on a snow-yak (that’s right) and three dancing liquor bottles come to the rescue. The doctor and nurses get drunk, and the boy magically travels to an enchanted place filled with dancing, happy people, where...
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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