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REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Fast and frenzied

Mental illness isn’t a common subject matter for dance, but then again Company Chameleon isn’t your average dance troupe. The Manchester-based company dedicates itself to showing people the possibilities of dance both on stage and off, frequently complementing its performances with public workshops that examine the stories behind its work. CC has plans to round out its current tour of “Witness,” a 2016 dance theatre work about the debilitating effects of bipolar disorder, with a series of classes in Manchester next month delving into the movement and text informing the piece.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

A Blessing and a Curse

Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Fairy’s Kiss” is a captivating piece of dance storytelling, fusing genres of fairy tale, mystery, and romance to powerful effect. Set to Igor Stravinsky’s enchanting score and replete with gripping choreographic imagery, it’s a masterfully-crafted and thought-provoking ballet in which Ratmansky’s talent of making dance as a vital, immediate, and engrossing theatrical experience shines through and through. This 45-minute-long work was created for Miami City Ballet and received its much anticipated premier at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami on February 10. This was the second ballet by the famed Russian-born choreographer for MCB, the first being...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Sweet Dreams

A kind of cross between Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and the booze-infested flick, Lost Weekend, the world premiere confection, “Whipped Cream,” landed with a sumptuous, if occasional cloying, sweetness in Orange County for a five-day run, before making its frothy way to American Ballet Theatre’s home—the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House—in May.

REVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Star Power

Canada's All Star Ballet GalaSony Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, Ontario, February 11, 2017

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Form & Content

A book, physically cut from the pages of another, is the inspiration behind Wayne McGregor’s “Tree of Codes.” Much like the Jonathan Safran Foer book with which it shares its title, McGregor’s work is an experiment in the arrangement of form and content. In collaboration with Jamie xx and artist Olafur Eliasson, who conceived the incredible stage design for “Tree of Codes,” these three artists have created a complex, multi-sensory work of dance and design that turns the act of viewing upon its head.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Grotesque Steps

Snow White outstretched in her glass coffin. A company of black-veiled figures gathered round. Before long she is dragged into life and her gory fate at the hands of her cruel stepmother is played out before the audience.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Sensing Loss

A room, its furniture haphazardly stacked. The armchair lies toppled, the door, placed flat like a table-top, is reimagined as a bed; the cupboards become miniature doorways or upstairs windows through which the company climb.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

A Given Light

Death and taxes are the two inevitables in a person’s life. And while taxes are not ever danced about (danced around, perhaps), the subject of death has never been one from which dancers and choreographers have shied away. As part of its “Flower of the Season,” currently in its 14th year, Body Weather Laboratory (a forum for investigating kinesthetic and movement research that was initiated in 1978 by dancer/farmer and improvisateur, Min Tanaka), presented a new work by Oguri, the Japan-born Butoh dancer who leads BWL in Venice, and, to be blunt, never fails to astonish.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

A Mixed Bill

In a concert of five works—notable for a lack of discernible style—Jessica Lang Dance roared into Los Angeles last weekend as if it were the second coming. At only six years old, this troupe has somehow catapulted itself to the front ranks of companies.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Blow Up

Waterbeds may have been a 70’s fad, but what about inflatable furniture? For a mere $74.95 (with free shipping, who knew?), Amazon offers the sofa of your dreams, one designed with a “waterproof-flocked top surface and a vinyl bottom that provides an incredibly comfortable sitting surface for any occasion.” For Lionel Popkin, a former Trisha Brown dancer and a choreographer who has mined his Hindu/Jewish roots, memorialized Ruth St. Denis and sautéed onions and curried zucchini in a range of works that satisfied, amused and, if not necessarily provoked, left indelible imagery nonetheless.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

What Would Sia Do?

Performer Lucy Gaizely and her ‘tween’ fourteen year old son Raedie sit on stage, clad in flesh-coloured leotards and classic Sia blonde bob wigs. Both are huge fans of the husky voiced Australian singer-songwriter and record producer Sia Furler. Both have a rebellious streak, and a tendency (by their own admissions) to run off at the mouth. Both have soulful eyes, and mischievously twitching mouths. Both are at the juncture in their lives where they are acutely, excruciatingly, embarrassing to each other, often in public.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Humanity Restored

At the end of Batsheva Dance Company’s “Last Work,” a man sits with his back to us and his legs spread, apparently masturbating. Then he rotates to face us and we see he is cleaning a machine gun. Meanwhile, club music pounds, a frenzied crowd runs in circles, lights flash, streamers fly. Ian Robinson drags out a microphone and starts lashing it to the floor with masking tape. Then he screams.

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.