World-class review of ballet and dance.
During the summer, two Chinese dance productions came to Koch Theater at New York’s Lincoln Center: “Lady White Snake” from Shanghai Grand Theater in July and “Butterfly Lovers” from Hong Kong Ballet in August.
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When Amy Watson took the reins at the Royal Danish Ballet one year ago, she entered stormy waters.
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I walk into Roulette, a rough-around-the-edges world music venue, a couple of blocks from the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). I am attending “Dambudzo,” presented as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival, brought to the neighborhood by the bold imagination and creative enterprise of Zimbabwe performing artist Nora Chipaumire.
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A rehabilitated 117-year-old power plant situated on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, once a toxic waste site, now houses an amazing new contemporary arts hub—Powerhouse Arts.
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To say the least, the true story of a juvenile axe murderer seems unlikely to inspire a ballet. But the legends surrounding the late nineteenth-century murders of Lizzie Borden’s father Andrew and her stepmother, Abby persist, perhaps because Lizzie was ultimately acquitted, and no other suspect was ever identified or brought to justice.
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The National Ballet of Japan’s rendition of the Frederick Ashton classic, “Cinderella,” offers an authentic taste of English tradition, subtly flavored by Japanese aesthetics.
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When Wally Cardona and Molly Lieber enter to take their places on opening night, they’re stepping into the footprints of a venerable dance legacy.
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As October starts to draw to an end, so too does Dance Umbrella, London’s annual international dance festival. Having worked their way through the Barbican and Sadler’s Wells East, one of the final programmes is on at the Place—which has had an especially impressive Autumn season.
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This fall, the American Ballet Theatr is celebrating its 85th anniversary by highlighting the choreographers key to the company’s history. Agnes de Mille, Antony Tudor, Frederick Ashton, Michel Fokine, Marius Petipa, George Balanchine and Alexei Ratmansky are all featured, but only Twyla Tharp got her own night.
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What’s special about Rudi van Dantzig’s “Romeo and Juliet” is how deeply it is steeped in the textures of popular devotion and everyday life, reminiscent of Flemish painting in its chiaroscuro and crowded humanity.
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Who is David Roussève? Is he a 64-year-old African American dance/theater artist taking to the stage in a solo outing for the first time in 20 years? Check!
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Folded forward at the waist, knees pressed together, but with her feet apart, Rachel Coulson assumes bird-like form. With her legs held as if bound at the knees, she travels backwards. Arms extended away from her torso giving the impression of wings, she rotates her hands as if her feathery tips are taking readings of the environment around her. In the conjuring of shapes, of course a waterbird appears before my eyes. This is part two of DanceX, presented by the Australian Ballet, where Stephanie Lake Company’s “Auto Cannibal,” replete with Coulson’s bird-like solo, shares the stage with West Australian...
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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