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Twists and Turns
REVIEWS | Di Rachel Howard

Twists and Turns

Smuin is an unusual company. It was founded by former San Francisco Ballet co-director Michael Smuin in 1994, about a decade after San Francisco Ballet’s board declined to name him the company’s next director. For its first fifteen years, the new eponymous troupe mainly danced Smuin’s over-the-top theatrical spectacles, like “Zorro!” and “Carmina Burana.” When Smuin died suddenly in 2007, his longtime muse Celia Fushille became artistic director. She has continued to feed the audience the hammier Smuin spectacles they love, but she has also considerably stretched the repertory with the addition of works by Trey McIntyre, Stanton Welch, and...

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Rhythm is a Dancer
REVIEWS | Di Cecilia Whalen

Rhythm is a Dancer

If you were to watch Leonardo Sandoval dance from just the ankles up, you might suppose he's skating. He travels so effortlessly across the stage, gently twisting and turning as though gliding on a sheet of ice and guided by the wind. But Sandoval's not an ice skater—he's a tap dancer. Guiding him through space is not a chilly winter breeze but an even, complex, syncopated sense of rhythm.

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Harmonic Obsession
REVIEWS | Di Karen Greenspan

Harmonic Obsession

The 85th birthday of Philip Glass was feted to perfection amid the verdant rolling meadows at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in New York State’s Hudson River Valley. Nature conspired in staging an awe-provoking event with the Catskill Mountains as majestic backdrop, surrounding trees as arcaded entranceway for the performers, and clouds arriving on cue to mute the sun’s intensity.

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Better to Dance Than Kill
REVIEWS | Di Candice Thompson

Better to Dance Than Kill

A close-up image of white cloth undulates gently on a large projection screen set upstage. In front of it, a cameraman sits behind a table, facing the audience. His lens is trained on the bundle of white cloth draped on an easy chair set immediately downstage, its back to the audience. Underneath the fabric, dancer Albert Silindokuhle IBOKWE Khoza is wrapped up like a mummified king.

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All that Glitters
REVIEWS | Di Rachel Howard

All that Glitters

This return of Miami City Ballet felt like lifting the curtain on a new, wide-open moment. Fifteen years have passed since MCB last visited Berkeley’s Cal Performances; ten years have passed since MCB founding artistic director Edward Villella stepped down. The world is now post-covid (sort of), and the dance world is post-leadership changes at its Balanchine bastion, New York City Ballet. And so, we Californians had a clean stage for seeing what Lourdes Lopez has done with Miami’s Balanchine legacy over her decade of helming the 52-member troupe. What a refreshing view it was.

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The Dancer and her Writing Life
BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | Di Martha Anne Toll

The Dancer and her Writing Life

Meg Howrey’s engaging new novel, They’re Going to Love You—her fourth—immerses readers in the ballet world. As a former ballerina, this is a place with which Howrey is intimately familiar. The plot revolves around a 40-something choreographer/erstwhile dancer, Carlisle, and her estranged father and his partner, James, both of whom are also in the dance world.

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Mary's Last Dance
TALKING POINTES | Claudia Lawson

Mary's Last Dance

Today I’m speaking with Mary Li, ballet mistress and principal répétiteur at the Queensland Ballet. Mary's story to the stage is an unlikely one—one of eight children, Mary grew up in a small town in Central Queensland called Rockhampton. She was the first person in her family to try ballet, but by the age of 16—the day after completing her Solo Seal exam—she flew to London after being accepted into Royal Ballet School. Her star continued to rise, on graduation Mary was accepted into London Festival Ballet, now the English National Ballet—and was made principal within four years. But it...

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Elegiac in Seattle
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

Elegiac in Seattle

“Do you feel you’ve changed as an artist?” Peter Boal, the artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet asked the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky at a pre-performance talk here in Seattle recently. The two men had been discussing Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the country in which Ratmansky spent his early years, and where his parents still live. Ratmansky hesitated, then responded, “I’m definitely changed as a person.” Earlier he had said that he had never considered himself a political artist. Asked what that phrase, political artist, meant to him, he demurred. “I’m not sure yet.”

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Glass Etudes
REVIEWS | Di Karen Hildebrand

Glass Etudes

A three-quarter-mile stroll through grounds once devoted to horses led audience members, toting lawn chairs and picnic fare, to a broad meadow set with an outdoor stage, gleaming grand piano perched atop, purple shades of the Catskill range visible in the distance. The late summer day could not have been more perfect for the opening of Kaatsbaan Cultural Park’s Fall Festival 2022 in Tivoli, NY, where “The Glass Etudes at Kaatsbaan Celebrating Philip Glass’s 85th Birthday” was performed by five piano artists and five sets of choreographers and dancers as the sun set over an idyllic Hudson Valley.

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Future Tense
REVIEWS | Di Lorna Irvine

Future Tense

The aesthetic is clear: a laboratory, all clean, ergonomic surfaces and clinical shiny spaces. Like any future focusing corporation, this is full of smiley, benign worker ants in preppy, GAP like workwear. But this is no prosaic company—this is Nu Life,  run by the sinister, megolamaniacal Dr Coppelius. Prototypes of a new doll litter the workspace: arms, heads and swipable screens, where a sex doll—very reminiscent of cinematic babes a la Metropolis, The Fifth Element  or Akira are being produced, en masse. Welcome to a clone for the dystopian tomorrow we've been warned about.

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Imperfect Recollection
REVIEWS | Di Madelyn Coupe

Imperfect Recollection

Australasian Dance Collective revived their sold-out production of “Aftermath” for Brisbane Festival—the city’s annual multi-arts festival that runs for the month of September. Created by Amy Hollingsworth and Jack Lister, the production was a collaboration performed by the company to the score composed by vocalist and songwriter Danny Harley of the Kite String Tangle. One part electric-synth concert, two parts sensory exploration, “Aftermath” hooked the audience from the first explosion of light and didn’t let go until it had said all it needed to say.

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Lucinda Dunn's Key to Success
TALKING POINTES | Claudia Lawson

Lucinda Dunn's Key to Success

Today I am speaking with the Artistic Director of the Tanya Pearson Academy, Lucinda Dunn. Lucinda started her life in dance destined for London’s West End - where her mum had been a performer, but a chance meeting with a ballet teacher named Tanya Pearson saw a change of direction, and at 15 she flew to Tokyo to compete in the Prix de Lausanne—and Lucinda’s life changed. In our conversation Lucinda shares her life story—how she joined the Royal Ballet School, broke her back, before being offered a contract with the Australian Ballet—a partnership which lasted nearly 23 years and...

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Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard
Starry Nights

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.

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