World-class review of ballet and dance.
In Ballet West’s most recent triple bill, which featured Jiří Kylián’s “Symphony of Psalms,” George Balanchine’s “Apollo,” and Nicolo Fonte’s “The Rite of Spring,” the dancers shone brighter than the choreographers.
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In 1982, Bebe Miller made her debut as a dancemaker when Ishmael Houston-Jones invited her into his Parallels series that featured Black choreographers who were experimenting in new forms.
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The bubble machine is the first thing that hits you as you enter. There are bubbles everywhere. The second is the energy—families with babies and small children are crammed into every corner, bringing a kinetic force to the auditorium. It's pandemonium—all going off like popcorn in a pan.
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Programming, like staging and choreography, is an art, and Ángel Corella surpassed himself with all three in this early spring show featuring all new works.
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In some ways, dance could be considered an extreme sport: it meets many of the same criteria, featuring (at times) high speeds, significant risk, and the potential for severe injury. French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane seeks to reinforce this parallel in his new work “Outsider,” which received its UK premiere at Sadler’s Wells on March 26th as part of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
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Have they started or are they just practicing?” asks a gentleman sitting in the row behind me. It’s a fair question: students from Rambert School of Ballet nonchalantly execute their own sequences of repeated movements as the audience filters in, taking their seats on all four sides of the vast performance space.
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Co. Un Yamada, a dance company and creative collective established in Tokyo in 2002, returned to the New National Theatre Tokyo last week to reprise their popular family-friendly production from 2021, “Obachetta.”
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Vous les voyez, les étoiles dans la salle?” the woman next to me whispered as the lights dimmed. And indeed, the stalls glittered with former stars of the Paris Opéra Ballet—dancers I recognised, visibly moved and deep in conversation during the interval.
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There is probably no more beloved ballet, by audiences and dancers alike, than “Romeo and Juliet.”
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Books are banned, DEI scuttled, and Africanist studies scaled back. Yet, the irrepressible spirit of African American artists is not extinguished.
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“Lists of Promise,” a new work currently in a two-week run from March 13- 30 at the East Village cultural landmark, Theater for the New City, promised more than it delivered, at least for now.
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“State of Heads” opens with a blaze of white light and loud clanking onto a white-suited Levi Gonzalez, part Elvis, part televangelist addressing his congregation. A pair of women sidle in—Rebecca Cyr and Donna Uchizono—dressed in ankle-length white dresses and cowered posture.
Continue ReadingWatching 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,...
Continue ReadingThe 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.
Continue ReadingAfter 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.
Continue ReadingAn “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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