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Delicate Aberrations
REVIEWS | Di Cecilia Whalen

Delicate Aberrations

When Trisha Brown's “Foray Forêt” begins, dancers look like shadows against a purple backdrop until the stage fades in to light. We see intricate, gentle, movements: slight inclines of the head, swinging arms, brief transfers of weight between the group. They are done with great precision, sometimes independently and sometimes remarkably synchronized. “Foray Forêt” was choreographed in 1990, and Brown said she was trying to tap into her subconscious to create simplified, intimate gestures. It was one collaboration of many with Brown's good friend and creative partner Robert Rauschenberg (he did the visual design and the costumes) and was recently...

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Fairies and Fireflies
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

Fairies and Fireflies

Is there a better way to end the spring season than with George Balanchine’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”? If so, I can’t think of it. Mendelssohn’s music, with its breathless forward drive, pulls one immediately into the story. (In this, it is reminiscent of “The Nutcracker” score.) George Balanchine’s choreography is equally transporting. From the first moment, as a flurry of tiny butterflies and fairies—beautifully-trained kids from the School of American Ballet—skitters across the stage, we are drawn into Shakespeare’s world. The spell lasts until the end of the first act, when all the characters, both human and magical, make peace...

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Moving Meditation
REVIEWS | Di Karen Hildebrand

Moving Meditation

At the hands of choreographer Stephen Petronio, a return to the stage after two years away becomes an occasion to both honor the past and contemplate the current moment. Opening night of the Stephen Petronio Company’s weeklong engagement at the Joyce Theater includes a new work, a restaging of vintage Trisha Brown, and an emotionally redeeming piece from company repertory, “Bloom,” accompanied live by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.

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Ode to “Serenade”
BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | Di Sophie Bress

Ode to “Serenade”

To many dancers, Balanchine is a figure so imbued with history, he’s almost not real. He lives on through his 465 works, which we study in dance history classes, watch onstage, and—if we’re lucky—learn ourselves. He’s almost been stripped of humanity, raised up to such a high status that it’s easy to forget that he—in his own words—“pulled the toilet chain for the same reason you do.” Toni Bentley, and her latest book, Serenade, are here to remind us.

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The Biggest Dance Party of the Year
FEATURES | Di Candice Thompson

The Biggest Dance Party of the Year

Abdel R. Salaam met Dr. Charles R. Davis in 1969. Known as Baba Chuck (“Baba” being a term of endearment for patriarchal figures in communities worldwide), he founded the DanceAfrica Festival at BAM in 1977. Baba Salaam, the current artistic director for DanceAfrica, danced in those inaugural performances with the Chuck Davis Dance Company.

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Mats Ek is Back at the Paris Opera Ballet
REVIEWS | Di Candice Thompson

Mats Ek is Back at the Paris Opera Ballet

As bells sounded the theme opening Georges Bizet’s Carmen Suite, Simon Le Borgne sat slumped on an exercise ball, facing upstage, his head drooped so low he appeared in the spotlight as an almost headless Don José. Others entered, including Ida Viikinkoski as M., Don José’s betrothed. Trying to conjure him awake with sharp motions that ticked like a clock, she left him to the battalion of soldiers, lining up to serve as his firing squad. The effect was one of a bad dream, a premonition that was both the beginning and ending of Mats Ek’s “Carmen,” created for Cullberg...

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Rambert Spring
REVIEWS | Di Emily May

Rambert Spring

Dutch sibling duo and NDT alumni Imre and Marne van Opstal’s “Eye Candy” was first presented to audiences as a digital dance work last summer. Almost a year later, it made its live UK theatre debut last week as the opening performance of Rambert’s latest triple bill of works. Exploring the theme of body politics, “Eye Candy” features a cast of eight dancers dressed in synthetic moulded torsos giving the impression of nudity. Adding stiff, perky breasts and tight six packs to the performer’s already toned and athletic bodies, these costumes cleverly introduce conversations around unattainable beauty standards even before...

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Stravinsky’s Dark Fairies
REVIEWS | Di Faye Arthurs

Stravinsky’s Dark Fairies

The first time the scope of Balanchine’s Stravinsky Festival hit me, it was physical; I recognized it in my dancing body. I was learning the finale of “Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée,’” an infrequently performed work I had never seen, and, as if by fairy-kiss magic, I already knew many of the steps. Sweaty and panting on a five, I asked Rosemary Dunleavy, the senior repertory director who was teaching the ballet, why there were so many of the same steps—but out of order—from the Five Couples' dances in “Symphony in Three Movements” (which we performed frequently). She...

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Piano Man
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

Piano Man

We don’t usually associate the choreographer Jerome Robbins with the music of Tchaikovsky.  But on occasion, Robbins did choreograph to music by the Russian composer. One of these works, “Piano Pieces,” was made for New York City Ballet’s 1981 Tchaikovsky Festival. This week it returns to the repertory for the first time since 2008, paired with Robbins’ tongue-in-cheek Verdi ballet “The Four Seasons.” The combination makes for a light, bright, and relatively brief evening, something of a relief after the two-week Stravinsky Festival.

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True Calling
INTERVIEWS | Di Victoria Looseleaf

True Calling

Having choreographed more than 100 works for companies worldwide, including American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the National Ballet of Japan, Jessica Lang, who grew up in Bucks County, PA, began studying ballet as a child. At the tender age of 13, realizing that dance was her true calling, she never looked back, becoming a creative force in the process.

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Return to the Lake
REVIEWS | Di Rachel Howard

Return to the Lake

San Francisco Ballet capped artistic director Helgi Tomasson’s departing season with his “Swan Lake,” headlined by four promising casts. On opening night I saw Frances Chung as Odette/Odile, and she was technically impeccable, emotive without crossing over into camp, and athletically powerful—but she didn’t believably click with Joseph Walsh’s playboy-esque Siegfried. Then I received emails from strangers reporting that Sasha De Sola’s debut in the role had left them dazzled. So I returned to see her second go at it with Max Cauthorn as Siegfried, and am I ever glad I did. Growing up in Fresno, California, I used to...

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Ode on a Grecian Urn
REVIEWS | Di Marina Harss

Ode on a Grecian Urn

There was nothing new about the trio of works on show at New York City Ballet on May 10—“Apollo,” “Orpheus,” and “Agon,” except the pairing with a brief orchestral suite by Stravinsky at the start of the evening. Stravinsky’s “Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra” is a charmer, in the composer’s neoclassical style of the 1920’s, light, sparkling. Its second movement, a jaunty waltz for the flute, is like a playful out-take from “Petrushka.”

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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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