Lifted Spirits
Even at his most straightforward, Paul Taylor often imbued his dances with a sardonic wit. Whether invoking darkness or light, he did so with a wink.
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Dream Come True
Talk about Gesamtkunstwerk! Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s “SCAT!...The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar,” is just that—a total work of art: operatic in scale, replete with stellar musicians and singers, and the glorious dancers of Urban Bush Women, the troupe that Zollar founded in 1984, is also storytelling at its best.
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The Tragedy of Hamlet
Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, “Hamlet” might seem the hardest to adapt into dance. Its long soliloquies and a titular character stymied by indecision do not immediately scream movement potential.
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A Birthday Suite
Complexions Contemporary Ballet turned 30 this year, and their two-week residency at the Joyce Theater was a party.
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Dance to the Music
BalletX concluded its 2024 season in its new home, the Suzanne Roberts Theatre across from the Wilma, a theater that had been its home for 18 years.
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An Evening with Omar
A duet featuring the choreographer himself was an unexpected treat when Boca Tuya, founded in 2018 by Omar Román de Jesús, took the stage at 92NY last week. De Jesús is a scintillating model for the liquid, undulating movement style that flows through all three works of the evening.
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Balanchine's America
George Balanchine loved American culture because he loved America. He had lived through tyranny and chaos as a boy in the Russian Revolution, and though his displays of affection for his adopted homeland could border on silly (like the Western bolo ties he favored as fashion statements), he never took for granted the possibilities he found here, never stopped extolling America’s freshness and energy.
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Human Movement
Midway through “Frontera,” the dancers of Animals of Distinction, a multimedia dance company based out of Montreal, press their bodies into each other to form a line at the bottom of a large rectangle of blue light.
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A Liberated Congress
“Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” said Mickey Rooney to Judy Garland in the definitive Depression-era musical film, Babes in Arms, lo those many years ago. Well, if Denna Thomsen and Zak Ryan Schlegel had been around back then, what a show they would have mounted!
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The Body as Archive
All too often it seems the human memory is too short. History is easily forgotten and, in a week where Americans are still processing the results of the presidential election, it is hard not to feel like we are doomed to repeat ourselves.
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Dance not Tell
Eyeballs, screaming crones, and bloody axes were projected on a scrim at the top of American Ballet Theater’s new production of “Crime and Punishment.” Not bad for Halloween programming! Yet, despite Isobel Waller-Bridge’s cinematic, pressure-cooker score—which frequently evoked escape room music—there was very little suspense in Helen Pickett and James Bonas’s new narrative full-length.
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New World Record
Records are for keeping. A record of the past in permanent form, an account. An official report. The sum of past achievements. The best, most remarkable event of its kind, a world record, no less.
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Teenage Angst and Institutions
Watching 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,...
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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.
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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.
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America, F**K Yeah
After 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.
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Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup
An “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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