World-class review of ballet and dance.
Jacob’s Pillow, Vail, Saratoga, Kaatsbaan, Lake Tahoe, Nantucket, Fire Island. There are numerous summer festivals that feature world-class dancing in gorgeous natural landscapes around the US But the Battery Dance Festival, now in its forty-second year, is one of the few to offer soft grass and warm breezes as well as the glinting edges of the New York City skyline at sunset.
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The annual Tanz im August, a contemporary dance festival in Berlin, draws in hundreds of spectators and dance companies from around the world. This year, two companies with West African roots proved particularly popular: Nadia Beugré’s Libr’Arts and Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s Faso Dance Theatre.
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While the US Congress is still out on summer recess, CONGRESS VIII is alive and kicking, as well as spinning, vamping, breaking, and, well, blowing the roof off of the intimate L.A. Dance Project space, where eight cutting-edge commercial choreographers and a bevy of top-notch dancers dazzled the crowds in three sold-out performances over the weekend.
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For the fifty-seventh year of its summer residency in July at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), upstate in Saratoga Springs, the New York City Ballet brought three programs.
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Ilter Ibrahimof is the cofounder and artistic director of Toronto’s Fall for Dance North festival. Held annually since 2014, FFDN is a Canadian offshoot of the beloved New York City Center series.
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The inaugural season of “Escalator,” presented by Stephanie Lake Company in association with Abbotsford Convent, begins with the slow traction of Kady Mansour dressed head to toe in white as a tampon, replete with two strings around each ankle, and concludes with two dancers dressed as mirrored disco balls, declaring to the audience that they are “strong enough / to live without [us]” as they rewind and rotate on the dancefloor to Cher’s “Strong Enough.”
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In downtown Chicago, 100-foot-tall dancers glide along the Chicago River. Projected onto the enormous digital installation Art on The Mart, the dancers of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project look like ancestral spirits keeping watch over the city.
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Has any choreographer extracted as much value from the chug step as Mark Morris? Jerome Robbins came close in “Glass Pieces,” and George Balanchine gave chugs some big moments in “Apollo,” but Morris consistently uses the simple move to demonstrate a profound musicality.
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For thirteen years, from 2011 until this summer of 2023, Virginia Johnson was Dance Theatre of Harlem’s artistic director.
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Adrian Danchig-Waring is a poet. His body articulates anticipation and pleasure, the tumult of ecstasy, and the ache of longing in Lar Lubovitch’s “Desire,” created as part of Lubovitch’s 80th birthday celebration in collaboration with the Guggenheim’s Works and Process series.
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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.
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George Balanchine’s 1967 ballet “Jewels”—in which each act is inspired by a different semi-precious gem—has proven a touring warhorse.
Continue ReadingLong 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.
Continue ReadingIt 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.
Continue ReadingAs 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.
Continue ReadingOne 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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