World-class review of ballet and dance.
As Tokyo and its surrounding areas prepare to go into a second lockdown, it's unclear what the immediate future of ballet and live events will be in the Japanese capital. Only last month, ballet, dance, opera and other performing arts had made a welcome return and the outlook was bright as companies regrouped and held performances around the city playing to sold out or near sold out venues.
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Blessed be the diplomats and the grant writers! Seven years ago, Silicon Valley-based dancer and choreographer Philein Wang applied to the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and secured a $50,000 grant for a series of U.S.-China exchanges and tours. This year, confronted with anti-Asian racism in the U.S. and the police killing of George Floyd, she saw both a need and an opportunity and reached out to the State Department again.
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The sputtering stop-start of lockdown measures in the U.K. has wiped most of the 2020 dance season from the calendar, including a few live holiday performances that were optimistically (and, in hindsight, unrealistically) scheduled this autumn, like a bill of world premieres from English National Ballet. But it’s the year of make-do, and few companies have the leadership and resources to salvage so much from the wreckage as ENB, who swiftly rejigged those new works into a series of pay-per-view films for homebound audiences. It might be an emergency stopgap, but the digital programme works hard to capture the versatility...
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Solos and site-specific works were the dance world’s prevailing themes in 2020, for obvious reasons: people couldn’t touch each other or congregate. But the term site-specific can mean two different things. Sometimes it refers to a live event attended by a real, albeit limited, audience. For example, the LA Dance Project put on a series of drive-in shows, the Kaatsbaan summer festival offered spaced-out picnic blanket-seating, and Troy Schumacher and company are currently staging walk-through “Nutcracker” performances at the Wethersfield Mansion. But site-specific also refers to a dance choreographed for a particular place, which is then filmed and broadcast to...
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It's not just little girls who dream of escaping into ballet. Created for the screen by Christopher Hampson and set and costume designer Lez Brotherston and filmed by directors Jess and Morgs, The Secret Theatre comes across as a Victorian toybox full of rich, endless surprises. When a young boy, played with exuberance and wonder by Leo Tetteh, finds his way into an empty theatre, he is taken on an adventure into the heart of Christmas ballet, where dancers cast spells before his eyes. Here, Scottish Ballet bring the viewer not one, but two, magical ballets for the festive season, as...
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Shakespeare wasn't a man unfamiliar with pandemics. He lived through the plague and his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon was decimated by it, leaving thousands dead. It's timely, then, that Megumi Nakamura and Yasuyuki Shuto's beautifully produced and choreographed “Shakespeare The Sonnets” hit the New National Theatre Tokyo stage for two performances in late November 2020.
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It is difficult not to be effusive about Sydney Dance Company’s first live performance since Covid emerged. For the first time in nine months the audience is being ushered into Sydney's Carriageworks. It’s like so many performances, the lights are dimmed, there is chatter, but there are differences. Some people wear masks, and there is a spare seat on either side of each audience member. The occasion is not lost on the audience, excitable gratitude and disbelief seems to hang in the air. The Welcome to Country, recognizing the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of...
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Let’s be blunt: This is a year of desperation “Nutcrackers.” To deliver even one-fifth the joy of a live “Nutcracker” during these darkest pandemic days (and, I fear, to attract an even smaller share of the usual audience)—this must be counted a triumph.
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Covid-19 has been devastating to the performing arts. However, over the weekend I watched a performance by the Sarasota Ballet that reminded me of a pandemic silver lining: expanded accessibility. From my apartment in Brooklyn I’ve been able to see performances streamed from all over the world. These digital shows are a little surreal, and they cannot compete with live ones, but they do offer a glimpse of companies I usually don’t have the ability to see. In a normal year, I would not have had the opportunity to review this small Gulf Coast troupe, but this year I was...
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In the last three decades, the term Dance and Technology became a thing, a niche where choreographers strove to enhance and marry kinetic movement with digital, animation, film and video. Brilliant failures and successes ensued, depending on how the collaborators gelled with each other. One of the great triumphs was “BIPED,” (1999) where Merce Cunningham partnered with Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar's dazzling projected animation imagery and the murky, sonar-like thuds of Gavin Bryars' score. The dancers' shimmering tourmaline costumes furthered the underwater impression and the choreography swam, receding, wavery, elusive.
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The Swan, with choreography from David Dawson and written and filmed by Eve McConnachie, is of course inspired by “Swan Lake,” and focuses on the first six minutes of Act 4. It acts as (all being well next year) a wonderful taste of Scottish Ballet's forthcoming full adaptation and tour.
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According to his note accompanying Pacific Northwest Ballet’s latest digital stream, twice a week, artistic director Peter Boal attends a pandemic-strategizing Zoom meeting with the world’s leading companies—American Ballet Theatre, the Royal Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, and many more. Let’s hope other ballet leaders are listening keenly to his contributions, because this second repertory program shows PNB stepping up to our moment with encouraging grace and boldness.
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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