Life and Afterlife
In a willingness to explore the mythologies of the afterlife, I find my way to the last of a handful of seats for Melanie Lane’s “Arkadia” at the Substation.
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Adjacent Meanings
“Law of Mosaics” is a great title, and one that would befit almost any dance by the deconstructivist choreographer Pam Tanowitz. It just so happens that it belongs to the third ballet she has made for the New York City Ballet, and it stems from its Ted Hearne score.
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Asian Voices
Choreographers Caili Quan, Phil Chan, Zhong-Jing Fang, and Edwaard Liang are grateful to share the bill for Ballet West’s sixth choreographic festival, but hope that events like these will soon be rendered obsolete.
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One for the Money
A new ballet about Elvis Presley by the ubiquitous Annabelle Lopez Ochoa promised to be a perfect fit for San Francisco’s Smuin Contemporary Ballet; after all, company founder Michael Smuin (1938-2007) never met a pop song he couldn’t craft into a crowd-pleasing ballet ditty. The surprising thing about Ochoa’s “Tupelo Tornado,” though, is that it isn’t any fun.
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Let there be Light
For the first time in a year, the Sydney Dance Company is back home in Sydney. After a long hiatus touring the world—a post Covid catch-up tour if you will—the company has arrived in Walsh Bay to present their newest work, the world premiere of “momenta.”
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School's Out
Grace Maduell Holmes has only been the new director of the San Francisco Ballet School five months, but she’s wasted no time getting ambitious.
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Dancing with You
The stage is strewn with potatoes. Single straight back chair, overturned. A canteen. At center is a life scale charcoal sketch, unframed on canvas. It looks like a human figure topped by a dark smudge of a head—the shape calls to mind a famous work of Gustav Klimt.
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Fifth Avenue Blooms
How long is their nap?” my three-year-old asked about halfway through the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s performance of “Group Primary Accumulation,” a 20-minute supine dance for four.
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They Were There
In her new biography, The Swans of Harlem, journalist Karen Valby is witness to the testimony of five pioneering Black ballerinas intimate with the founding history of Dance Theatre of Harlem.
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Level Up
Sacramento Ballet executive and artistic director Anthony Krutzkamp dresses sharp and gives a memorable pre-curtain speech. The way he tells it, the Central California company was in rehearsals for “Swan Lake” last year when he realized he faced an enviable problem: the dancers were too good for the ballets he’d programmed under a five-year plan.
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The Joy of Dance
If one wants a glimpse of Joy Womack’s rock-star like schedule, take a look at her Instagram account. One day she might be dancing in Paris—her current home base—another day it’s Florence, then it’s Lagos, Guayaquil, and Melbourne.
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Sundays on Broadway
This year marks the tenth anniversary of Cathy Weis' “Sundays on Broadway,” a performance series that welcomes experimentation from a curated group of seasoned and emerging artists hosted intimately in Weis’ SoHo loft.
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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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