World-class review of ballet and dance.
A ballet as famed and often performed as “Swan Lake” comes with both high expectations and the risk of losing its lustre, making it both a rite of passage and a continuing challenge for dancers at all points of their careers. Audiences were able to see both in action in American Ballet Theatre’s recent 12-show run of “Swan Lake,” where dancers both debuted and revisited the iconic roles of Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried.
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For years Amar Ramasar was one of the most popular dancers at NYCB, admired for his joyful stage presence and exuberant dancing. He always seemed to be having more fun onstage than anyone, whether he was dancing Phlegmatic in “The Four Temperaments” or the “rhumba sailor” in “Fancy Free.” Choreographers like Justin Peck, Christopher Wheeldon, and Alexei Ratmansky were drawn to him. And colleagues like Sara Mearns and Peck involved him in outside projects like “A Dancer’s Dream,” with the New York Philharmonic, and “Carousel,” on Broadway.
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Sometimes a work of art can be compelling for its strict adherence to the rules of a given form, for the comfort and beauty that can be found in a virtuosity we already know how to gauge. Classical ballet is rife with examples of this sort. Other times, a spirit of rebellion or failure to conform can provide a kind of satisfying spaciousness—an atmosphere in which we are dazzled not just by what our eyes are seeing but by what we might imagine going forward. On Thursday, June 30th, 2022, at the Joyce Theater, Christopher Williams Dances had moments of...
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Returning to Dancehouse’s Sylvia Staehli Theatre for Week Two of the Keir Choreographic Award, let us begin at the end. In a live cross to Carriageworks, Sydney, the 2022 KCA international jury, Daniel Riley (Wiradjuri/Australia), Eko Supriyanto (Indonesia), Laurie Uprichard (Ireland), Lemi Ponifasio (Aotearoa/New Zealand), and Nanako Nakajima (Japan), awards the $50,000 Keir Choreographic Award to Tra Mi Dinh for her questioning of what really is an ending in her work “The ___”.
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Born in 1985 in Leverkusen, Philippe Kratz first encountered dance with the German Tanztheater through pedagogue and choreographer Suheyla Ferwer. He then studied classical ballet at the École Supérieure de Dance du Québec in Montréal and at the Staatliche Ballettschule in Berlin. As a former long-time company member of Italian Aterballetto, he has worked with numerous international dance makers before deciding to deepen his understanding of, and artisanship in, choreography. In 2018 he created and danced “O,” which won Hanover’s choreography competition, as well as a residency with the Australian Dance Theatre. His work often focuses on resilience and its myriad...
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Desolate. Exuberant. What do we do now? We dance, of course. From a callout in November, 2021, eight applicants were selected to develop a work of up to 20-minutes in a five-month period (February to June) in 2022, for the fifth edition of the biennial Keir Choreographic Award (KCA). The eight commissioned works included Alan Schacher and WeiZen Ho, Tra Mi Dinh, Alice Will Caroline, and Jenni Large, in Week One at Dancehouse, Melbourne. With Lucky Lartey, Rebecca Jensen, Joshua Pether, and Raghav Handa to follow in Week Two, at the culmination of which, the $50,000 prize will be awarded...
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Pacific Northwest Ballet finally made good on its long-planned tour to New York City this week, exactly two years after its intended run. Covid was still, unfortunately, plaguing the troupe: many last-minute principal replacements were announced in both the dancing ranks and those of the PNB orchestra—who were also, impressively, along for the tour. Poor, lovely Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan danced in two pieces while taking a mask on and off depending on whether she was in proximity to other dancers’ faces. (What a lot to keep track of! Did she have a mask waiting in every wing?) Despite these pandemic remnants,...
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In Alexei Ratmansky’s revival of Marius Petipa’s lost classic “Harlequinade,” we have the familiar characters Pierrot and Pierette, Harlequin and Columbine. Known from paintings, figurines, pantomimes, other ballets, sweets, and from the commedia dell’arte. With a chorus of characters, young and old, coloured by collective, ever-changing memory over the centuries, the Australian Ballet presents “Harlequinade” a co-production with American Ballet Theatre. This merry romp, a light-hearted play, a confection for the senses. True to history, “Harlequinade’s” appeal lies in its quick-change movements of the familiar, stock characters and the quick-change movements of the story. In his pre-curtain address, on opening...
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I drive the winding ascent to the bucolic grounds of Jacob’s Pillow on opening day of the longest-running dance festival in the United States. The historic farmstead in the foothills of the Massachusetts Berkshire Mountains was purchased in 1930 by modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn. Today it is abuzz with activity gearing up for its 90th anniversary season and gala. The Pillow’s artistic and executive director Pamela Tatge gives me a rundown of what has been accomplished in the 90 years since Ted Shawn and his all-male company began holding “Tea Lecture Demonstrations” in 1933─the beginning of what was to evolve into the...
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Who is Marta Carrasco? Her bio says that she’s a “celebrated Catalan artist who moves between theater, dance and the visual arts as a performer, dancer, choreographer and director.” She also formed her own company in 1995 and has taken home a fistful of awards, including the National Dance Prize of Catalonia and several Max awards. But in what was billed as Carrasco’s farewell performance at Los Angeles Theatre Center, in a mind-blowing 11-day run presented by the Latino Theater Company, Carrasco delivered a gut-punch to the soul in her never less than astonishing, “Perra de Nadie.”
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George Balanchine famously said, “there are no mothers-in-law in ballet.” Well, fifteen minutes into “Of Love and Rage,” Alexei Ratmansky’s new full-length production for the American Ballet Theater, there was one mother-in-law pacing the stage and two fathers-in-law in a reconciliation dance. By the intermission, the leading lady Callirhoe (Catherine Hurlin, exquisite) had been married twice, impregnated, threatened into a coma (huh?), buried alive, and abducted by pirates. In Act II she was nearly kidnapped twice more. She was saved only by the deus ex machina intrusion of a war that required the services of all the men in the...
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Born in 1965 and raised in the town of Bedford in Westchester, New York, Peter Boal began studying ballet at the School of American Ballet at age nine. His life has been devoted to the art ever since. Boal joined New York City Ballet’s corps in 1983 and became a principal dancer six years later. In 2003, while still at City Ballet, he founded the eponymous Peter Boal and Company, a risk-taking chamber ensemble that commissioned original works, often from little-known postmodern choreographers. (He had also been a full-time faculty member at his alma mater since 1997.)
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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