All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 102

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REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Not Too Sweet

Flourishing his sword in the air, the Nutcracker cried aloud, “Crack—crack—crack—stupid pack—drive mouse back—stupid pack—crack—crack—mouse—back—crick—crack—stupid pack.”[note]E. T. A. Hoffman, Nutcracker and Mouse-King, trans. Mrs. St. Simon, (New York, 1953) 36. Viewed online at American Libraries archive.org.[/note] In the beginning, in the words of E. T. A. Hoffmann, there was a “hateful” Mouse-King with fourteen eyes and seven heads who gnawed with sharp teeth at the gingerbread and sugar-plums. In the beginning there was a Mouse-King and his ragged army to defeat. A dancing cast, there on the page, their actions written as sounds, ripe for musical translation and, arguably, the...

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

The Summit is Blue

In 1924, Captain John Noel, with the aid of his hand-cranked camera (and steel nerves, I wager) captured footage of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine’s infamous attempt to climb Everest in all its beauty and brutality. The footage, recently restored by the British Film Institute National Archive in The Epic of Everest: The official record of Mallory and Irvine’s 1924 expedition (with a score composed, orchestrated and conducted by Simon Fisher Turner), saddles a backpack to the shoulder of the viewer even by today’s standards, and leaves me in little doubt as to the majesty of such an environment. Alongside...

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Shades of Opulence

Ako Kondo in Stanton Welch's “La Bayadère.” Photograph by Lynette Wills

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Old Wounds

The billing for “Young Men,” Iván Pérez’s contribution to NOW's WW1 Centenary Art Commission, features an up-close shot of a man’s grimy, tear-stained face alongside a quote from Jose Narosky: “In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” The ad speaks to the hushed, harrowing sense of violence Pérez endeavours to capture and shape in his forthcoming piece, which is due to premiere in January and meditates on the psychological reverberations of wartime bloodshed.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Give and Take

There are few dancers who can reconcile vigour and grace as seamlessly as Sylvie Guillem, she of Paris Opera and Royal Ballet fame. The French superstar teamed up with the acclaimed Russell Maliphant to create “Push” back in 2005, and nine years, dozens of performances and a handful of awards later, the programme feels fresh as ever as it returns to London for its final run.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Something different, something new

In a recent conversation with the Royal Opera House, Wendy Whelan compares “Restless Creature” to a flower blossoming, explaining “at the beginning it is a tight bud ... but as the programme goes on the movement unravels.” To take her analogy further, I’d liken the bill to a romantic relationship unfolding, one that blooms in the wake of desire and fights to flourish, despite losing a few petals to the tribulations of couplehood. This interpretation may represent but a personal take, but there's no denying the four duets at hand—each of which features a young male choreographer who doubles as...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Solo for Two

Today’s dancers are getting younger and more technically dazzling, coming from the jump-higher-turn-faster school of ballet. Indeed, So You Think You Can Dance, where the 90-second “contemporary” swaggerfest lives, springs to mind. But the question remains: Are these brave young terpsichores also more artistic or is it merely a surface thing?

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

New and Unsettled

To begin, it is all about numbers and the patterns they form. One inaugural award, the Keir Choreographic Award, dedicated to commissioning new choreographic work and fostering innovation in contemporary dance both nationally and internationally.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Hidden Talents

With “Tryst: Devotion and Betrayal,” New English Ballet Theatre demonstrates an unfortunate truth: enthusiasm alone does not a successful performance make. The dancers here are sound and their energy laudable, but the mixed bill, a hodge-podge of five wildly different works, ultimately proves a victim of its own ambition, pitching overpowering choreography to underwhelming effect.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

In pursuit of profundity

There’s ample room for wavering quality within a mixed bill. A couple of solid pieces can easily compensate for a weak one, and it only takes one standout work to make audiences recall a programme favourably, provided its companions aren’t complete duds.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Imperial Suite

“See the music, hear the dance,” a quote attributed to George Balanchine, perfectly encapsulates “Ballet Imperial,” Balanchine’s one-act love letter to the choreography of Marius Petipa and the compositions of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and the splendour of imperial Russia as he saw it. The work employs Petipa’s courtly overtone with its hierarchical framework of dancers and melds it to Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 2 in G major, op. 44. The result is a work that whilst recalling the Winter Palace with all its grandeur, typifies his belief that “dance is music made visible.” And having now seen this work performed twice...

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Torque of the Town

Deoxyribonucleic acid, a hereditary, self-replicating material present in humans and nearly all living organisms is a near-to dictionary definition of DNA, and this year’s “Bodytorque” theme. When we think of DNA, we picture two threads coiled to form a double helix not unlike a spiral staircase. And just as this genetic blueprint of “who we are” exists in countless possible conformations, so too it does in the 2014 season of the Australian Ballet’s “Bodytorque.” “Mysterious and ubiquitous, secretive and powerful, the elegant molecule is the engine of life on this planet. Now, a new generation of choreographers have created works...

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

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,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

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.

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.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

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.

REVIEWS | Emily May

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.