Box Office Ballet
In its 92nd season—its second programmed by still relatively new artistic director Tamara Rojo—San Francisco Ballet kept playing with box office strategies.
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Latest
Evolving Dynamism
English National Ballet’s latest mixed bill presents a trio of works from William Forsythe, a dancemaker known for slanting ballet into new gradients, some playful, some confrontational, all of them spirited and agile.
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Portraits of a Lady
Martha Graham is the Georgia O’Keefe of dance. No matter what the source material, the primary subject of her works is womanhood.
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Motivation for Moving
Petite in stature, with beautiful, delicate features, Scottish dance artist Suzi Cunningham is nonetheless a powerhouse performer: an endless shape shifter whose work ranges from eerie to strange, to poignant, or just absolutely hilarious.
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Aim True
With his peerless vocabulary of postmodern abstract moves—or, as he’s called it, “gumbo style,” which blends Black dance with classical ballet techniques—Kyle Abraham, a 2013 MacArthur Genius grant awardee, has been making thought-provoking works for decades.
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The Right Way
Can art save civilization? The question matters deeply to Brenda Way, who has dedicated her life to the arts in San Francisco.
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In Good Company
At this year’s Resolution Festival in London, one of the city’s major events of the dance calendar, I found myself in a conversation about the state of affairs of dance internationally.
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Artistic Reintegration
While the television show Severance has been exploring the pitfalls of a complete division between people’s work and home lives, Sara Mearns’s recent solo show at New York City Center presented the dangers of the inverse.
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Call to Action
Reggie Wilson's “The Reclamation” opens in a waiting room. The stage is bare, and one dancer wanders downstage alone, as if his number's been called.
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British Balanchine
The Royal Ballet, with their polite style and emphasis on purity of line, does not always make for the best interpreter of George Balanchine’s works.
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Pig Ghosts and the Irish Renaissance
Oona Doherty is a choreographer that increasingly needs no introduction. The London-born Belfast native, who worked as a dancer across Europe, roared onto the scene as a choreographer with her solo work “Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus,” a searing examination of masculine culture that had the contemporary dance world abuzz.
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The Dancers Have It
In Ballet West’s most recent triple bill, which featured Jiří Kylián’s “Symphony of Psalms,” George Balanchine’s “Apollo,” and Nicolo Fonte’s “The Rite of Spring,” the dancers shone brighter than the choreographers.
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Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
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Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
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School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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