World-class review of ballet and dance.
An energetic air rippled through the crowd on opening night of “Platform,” a showcase of recent work assembled by Just Us Dance Theatre. The bill marks one of the Greenwich-based collective's first full-length offerings on a London stage, and a quick introduction by co-founders Joseph Toonga and Ricardo Da Silva, in which they implored the audience to “please be open about our efforts,” suggested a lot was riding on its reception.
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American Ballet Theatre’s brand new production of “The Sleeping Beauty” proved the most anticipated and talked about event of the ABT’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, and the highest point of the company’s 75th anniversary celebrations. This birthday gift was orchestrated by Alexei Ratmansky, one of the most prominent and prolific choreographers in today’s ballet. Russian-born Ratmansky has been ABT’s artist-in-residence since 2009; “The Sleeping Beauty” is his most ambitious undertaking for the company to date.
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Last week Richard Alston Dance Company came full circle in its national tour, rounding off its recent string of performances around the UK in London, the same city where it had kicked off proceedings. The 'at home' bit of “Alston At Home” doesn't just refer to the company's hometown; it's a specific credit to The Place, where Richard Alston started his career as a dancer (as one of the first students at London Contemporary Dance School) and is now artistic director. The bill commemorates the twentieth anniversary of RADC, which Alston launched following, among many other successes, a twelve-year tenure...
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New York City Ballet culminated its spring season at the David H. Koch Theater with George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”—a masterpiece of witty comedy and brilliant dancing.
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A decidedly polarizing figure that prides himself on creating what he calls, “a new type of theater—Russian psychological ballet theater,” Boris Eifman, according to naysayers, indulges in bombast, his storytelling skills often as thin as prosciutto and his choice of pastiche musical accompaniments (always heard on tape), enigmatic and frustrating to the point of being bizarre.
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American Ballet Theatre’s “La Bayadère” has just turned 35 years old, standing as one of the most enduring of the nineteenth century classics in the company’s repertory. Such impressive longevity can be attributed to the uniqueness of the current staging, mounted for the company in 1980 by Russian prima ballerina Natalia Makarova, who danced the ballet, originally created by Marius Petipa, during her years with the Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg (then called Kirov Ballet). Makarova acquired her knowledge of the interpretive nuances of the choreography as a manner of genuine artistic succession, learning the role of Nikiya, the ballet’s...
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Joseph Toonga is the co-founder and artistic director of Just Us Dance Theatre, a London-based dance collective started in 2007. Just Us is the resident company at Greenwich Dance, and explores the intersection of urban and classical styles, weaving together elements of hip-hop, contemporary dance, physical theatre and spoken word.
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Nat Cursio is a Melbourne-based dance maker, who creates choreographies, curated programs and developmental platforms under the umbrella Nat Cursio Co. Here, she illuminates her newest project, at least for a while anyway. 24 Frames Per Second opens at Carriageworks, Sydney on June 18.
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Dancehouse, Melbourne's longstanding centre for contemporary dance, will host dance maker and dance photographer Gregory Lorenzutti's inaugural Australian exhibition, “Dance is My Landscape” from June 12-14. More than one hundred of the Brazilian-born artist's images will occupy all three floors of the Carlton North dance institution, in a unique display dedicated to the art of capturing motion.
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“I love being in the studio, creating—it’s my happy place,” said Robert Binet, choreographic associate of the National Ballet of Canada. On the phone, he sounds exactly that—happy. In just a few years, the 23-year-old choreographer's career has blossomed. In September, his first piece for New York City Ballet will premiere at their annual fall gala, alongside new work by Justin Peck, Troy Schumacher and Myles Thatcher.
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In an astonishing display of courage, fortitude and wit, three dancers performed solos and with each other to a packed house in “Flower of the Season,” a series now in its 12th year presented by Body Weather Laboratory. B.W.L., a forum for investigating kinesthetic and movement research that was initiated by dancer/farmer and improvisateur, Min Tanaka, and is offered by exponents worldwide, is led in Venice by Oguri, the Japan-born performer who goes by one name only.
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With Los Angeles currently cited as the world’s hottest art market, many seem to forget that the city actually has a storied history, both in the visual arts as well as in presenting cutting edge performances. The year was 1983 and “Available Light,” a collaboration between Bay Area composer John Adams, Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, and then New York-based choreographer Lucinda Childs, was one of the first projects to inaugurate what was known as the Temporary Contemporary.
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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