All – Page 100 – Fjord Review

Latest

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Why Citizenship?

Before I tell you all about the inaugural Transform Festival, four words: Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project. The name has circulated among San Francisco dance fans since Klaymoon began making hip hop dance theater here in 2010, but so far the group has only toured to Oregon and Kenya, and they should be known everywhere. “Ancient Children,” the closer on the Transform Festival’s penultimate night, simply possesses the stage. The performers are charismatic, the hip-hop dance commanding, the truths delivered unflinching. In case I haven’t been emphatic enough: Call up your local presenter. You need to see this.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Brilliant Moderns

I raise my hand up above my head. I let it fall down. Connected to my body, my arm remains secure in its socket of the shoulder blade. My arm does not fall to the ground. My body is connected, “dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.” My body has my back, secure “doin’ the skeleton dance ….The backbone's connected to the neck bone. Doin’ the skeleton dance.” And it was in this manner that I read Alice Topp’s new choreographic work, “Little Atlas.” There may have been three dancers on the stage, Leanne Stojmenov, Kevin Jackson, and Andrew Killian,...

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

An Original Alice

It takes “layers and layers of tulle together in a honeycomb construction that opens up when it closes”[note]Senior Gentleman’s Cutter, Marsia Bergh, in conversation with Kate Scott, “Making Wonderland,” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland programme, The Australian Ballet, State Theatre, Melbourne, 2017, 22[/note] to make a tail that befits a White Rabbit. It takes countless hours (of drafting, devising, twinkling, rehearsing, measuring, stitching, and repeating thrice) to create a world of nonsense in every sense and this is as it should be.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

The Spirit of Bennelong

I lie low. I nestle in the soil. Are you a fighter? A collaborator? A victim? A survivor? An idealist? A realist? Some days I feel like I am Bennelong. I am Bennelong.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Coming on in Leaps and Bounds

Group dynamics are the key focus in Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's explosive “Rain,” which responds to the classic "Music for 18 Musicians" (1974-6) by American avant-garde composer Steve Reich. It is of course not the first time she has worked with Reich's music, as her company Rosas have previously performed to "Drumming," another seminal Reich piece. It's a perfect fit, as she is a deeply lyrical choreographer, fully cognisant of the nuances and textures of Reich's oeuvre: the rhythmic shifts, throbs, hums and waves; the voices which pulse like heartbeats. She really puts her dancers through their paces—it's almost as...

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Nightdance

A stagehand dressed in black makes the most of their invisibility cloak to move props into position. The great horned owl makes the most of their night vision to seek out their prey with efficiency. Swoop, snatch, gobble, gone. A human night owl stays up late, night adapted, like their namesake, their form revealed only by the screen’s cold glare as they tap at the keyboard. Wrangling deadlines, devouring novels, gambling their savings, postponing the activities of the day—who knows? Such is the endless allure of nocturnal creatures.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Future Tense

Forward-thinking London-based urban dance collective Blue Boy Entertainment's superb show is so titled with a deliberate mis-spelling, as according to their co-Artistic Director Michael 'Mikey J' Asante: “The names are written the way they are because they could be the names of people”—a deliberate tactic to avoid racial connotations and stereotyping, from the racially diverse company.The colours are rooted in universality, tightly packed in themes of identity, war, and survival, which touch everyone. It is a thrilling call for peace and tolerance.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Ballet Now & Then

What do a clown and a ballerina have in common? Plenty, as it turns out, if, that is, the clown is none other than the masterful Bill Irwin and the terpsichore is New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck, curator of BalletNOW, a trademarked, quasi-gala that features leading dancers from New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Miami City Ballet, the Royal Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet in three diverse, tasting-menu type programs.

INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

The Way Forward

It was my first visit to the Dance Commons, home of ODC/Dance nestled in San Francisco’s Mission District. Brenda Way, artistic director of ODC, looking summery on this Friday morning despite a bandaged ankle (nothing serious, routine dancer injury), met me in the foyer and took me on a tour.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

A Sweet Debut

Two new ballets created by Alexei Ratmansky were unveiled by two major ballet companies in New York this spring season: New York City Ballet premiered “Odessa” during Here/Now Festival at the David H. Koch Theater; and American Ballet Theatre presented “Whipped Cream” at the Metropolitan Opera House. (This was a New York premiere of “Whipped Cream.” The ballet was first performed by ABT in March at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California.)

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Starry Night

Celebrating the opening of its 96th season at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under the baton of the esteemed Gustavo Dudamel—his eighth season as the orchestra’s music and artistic director—offered an uneven program of ballet and music, some thrilling, some head-scratching, all begging for more, however.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Through Tatiana's Eyes

“Tatiana, dear Tatiana! / I now shed tears with you. / Into a fashionable tyrant’s hands / your fate already you’ve relinquished. / Dear, you shall perish; but before, / in dazzling hope, / you summon obscure bliss, / you learn the sensuousness of life, / you quaff the magic poisons of desire…”

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.