Creative Risk
If the ballet world now seems inundated with Dracula productions, Frankenstein adaptations are a rarer sight.
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“Tanz” opens on a ballet class like none I’ve ever attended. Onstage are two portable barres and four dancers in rehearsal clothes stretching and warming up. Eighty-three-year-old ballerina Beatrice Cordua teaches from a wheelchair, naked. “The toes are the tongue of the foot,” she declares as the dancers tendu at the barre. “You should take your clothes off,” she suggests. “Muscle is beauty. Muscle is movement.” Soon the stage is filled with curvy, tattooed female flesh. A series of grand tendus reveals glimpses of vulva that challenge my sense of modesty. A familiar floor stretch leaves nothing to the imagination.
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If the ballet world now seems inundated with Dracula productions, Frankenstein adaptations are a rarer sight.
Continue ReadingIt’s amusing to read in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s generally exceptional program notes that George Balanchine choreographed the triptych we now know as “Jewels” because he visited Van Cleef & Arpels and was struck by inspiration. I mean, perhaps visiting the jeweler did further tickle his imagination, but—PR stunt, anyone?
Continue ReadingAs I watch one after another pastel tutu clad ballerina bourrée into the arms of a white-tighted danseur, a melody not credited on the program floats through my brain. You know the one.
Continue ReadingMisty Copeland’s upcoming retirement from American Ballet Theatre—where she made history as the first Black female principal dancer and subsequently shot to fame in the ballet world and beyond—means many things.
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Great review! I’m sorry I couldn’t get to this show!