World-class review of ballet and dance.
Royal New Zealand Ballet returned in November to the UK for the first time in four years with a mixed programme celebrating New Zealand’s heritage and culture. The four works switch effortlessly between contemporary and classical dance showcasing the versatility of this young and energetic company of dancers.
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Together self-declared “dance artists” Eleanor Sikorski and Flora Wellesley Wesley are Nora, a spirited double act with a deliciously irreverent feminist streak. The pair studied together at London Contemporary Dance School and recently premiered their first evening-length programme, a triple bill of duets they conceived in conjunction with four guest choreographers: Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion, Simon Tanguy and Liz Aggiss.
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When American Ballet Theatre principal Michele Wiles founded BalletNext with New York City Ballet alum Charles Askegard shortly after decamping from ABT in 2011, the plan seemed to be the usual ballet-star vanity project: gala fare alternating with good to terrible contemporary vehicles for the dancer-directors and their guests. This proved true for the first season. But by 2014 Wiles, now alone at the helm, had largely given up on other choreographers, taking on the job herself with an assist from Brooklyn flexmeister Jay Donn in a cartoonish play of opposites.
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Christian Rizzo’s “d’après une histoire vraie” is based on Rizzo’s personal memories of a Turkish folk dance he saw at a festival in Istanbul. These memories are carried into the steps of his dance and captured in the informal, communal spirit between the dancers on stage.
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Phoenix Dance Theatre returned for the fourth time to the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House London with a triple bill of new and recently commissioned works. Phoenix is a company with a diverse repertoire and while a programme will always exhibit the technical strength of their dancers, it’s a pleasure to not quite know what to expect.
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It was a week like none other. Let’s just say that there was “before Paris” and then there was the unfathomably horrific, “after Paris,” when the world was once again irrevocably changed. Before Paris, people, went about their business—be it benign, beautiful, dutiful and/or consequential, which, in this writer’s case, happens to be covering the arts. And so it was with extraordinary excitement, that Royce Hall loomed early in this pre-holiday period, because that was where the intensely brilliant choreographer, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, who rarely ventures to the West Coast (she performed at Orange County’s Irvine Barclay Theatre in 1997;...
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“The Rite of Spring” is celebrated as much for its infamy as it is for its groundbreaking aesthetic and influence on twentieth-century dance and music. The uproar the avant-garde ballet—scored by Igor Stravinksy and originally choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes—provoked during its 1913 premiere in Paris has enticed many a dancemaker to tackle it in the century since, with choreographers as diverse as Kenneth MacMillan, Martha Graham, Glen Tetley and Pina Bausch trying their hand. In fact, the work has undergone more than 150 interpretations since its debut, and while some are more liberal than others,...
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How to reinvent J.S. Bach's famous, sublime Goldberg Variations? This collaboration between Stockholm-based choreographer Örjan Andersson and Scottish Ensemble's Jonathan Morton seeks to do just that, with a series of choreographic movements integrated with the musicians themselves, blurring roles and responding to the fragmentary nature of the music. It is an ambitious project, and one which mostly works through sheer audacity and imagination.
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Head down, an old man shuffles with the assistance of a wheeled walking frame past the ghostly blue façade of a building. Unbeknownst to him, his dog is tangled in his own lead and is being dragged on his back through the grey streets. In the background, a traditional jazz band plays.
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American Ballet Theatre’s principal dancer Marcelo Gomes, with his good looks, gentle manners and generous spirit, is the embodiment of a Romantic hero. In many ways, he is the ideal Prince Charming of classical ballet: handsome, sweet and kind. In the course of his 18-year career with the company, Gomes has danced scores of princely roles, covering most of the romantic and classical repertory from Albrecht to Siegfried and beyond. Yet the Brazilian-born dancer knows what it takes (and how it feels) to be an anti-hero in dance—particularly in modern dance—portraying, most fascinatingly, The Moor in Jose Limon’s “The Moor’s...
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Rambert’s latest bill, “Love, Art & Rock’n’Roll,” features works from three different choreographers, each corresponding to one of the titular motifs. There’s a fair bit of thematic crossover between Didy Veldman’s ‘art’ offering (“The 3 Dancers,” debuted earlier this autumn) and Kim Brandstrup’s ‘love’ (“Transfigured Night,” here receiving its London premiere): both are earnest in tone and romantic in subject—an intersection that somewhat sequesters Christopher Bruce’s jaunty 1991 Rolling Stones tribute, “Rooster” (in its final performance here). Thematic incongruity aside, the picks gave rise to some stellar opening night performances, with company favourites Dane Hurst and Miguel Altunaga shining particularly...
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Balanchine thought that wondering what a ballet was about was like pondering the theme of a flower. Cunningham averred that a dance was as fraught with meaning as stepping in to a diner for a cup of coffee. Puzzling over “themes” in dance marks you as a yokel, and the closest most sophisticated choreographers will come to indulging you is to defer to the music or some other structural element unlikely to yield answers.
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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