World-class review of ballet and dance.
Taking the historian’s long view, the message within “Last and First Men,” that “the whole duration of humanity, its evolution, and many successive species, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos,” is, to me, ultimately a comfort.
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While the ghosts of, among others, Judy Garland, Jack Benny and the cast of “All in the Family” might be haunting Television City’s soundstage 33 in Los Angeles, the dancers of American Contemporary Ballet (ACB), took metaphoric flight on Thursday when they performed the world premiere of, “The Euterpides.”
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“Into the Hairy”—the 45-minute ballet by choreographer Sharon Eyal and her creative collaborator Gai Behar—sets the tone immediately. Dancers dressed in arachnid-like unitards have a severe look, with black eye makeup that drips intensely down their cheeks, gothic and dramatic.
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Transformation is inevitable—and necessary in order to persist. That’s a theme that runs through two new works staged by Rotterdam’s Scapino Ballet in “Origin,” a program focused entirely on emerging choreographic talent.
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An apron-clad Marjani Forté-Saunders, spotlit on the steps of the St. Mark’s Church sanctuary, rocks from one bare foot to the other while swinging a brown paper bag, presumably filled with groceries.
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For the most dynamic performers, artistry is an embodied quality. Whether through natural aptitude or diligent training—or most often, a combination of the two—the performer transcends the physical, choreographed act of their composition to present something that lingers outside the boundaries of their form.
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Talk about the marriage of music and dance! Following in the footsteps of George Balanchine, whose works with Igor Stravinsky stretched across decades, Lincoln Jones, artistic director and choreographer of American Contemporary Ballet, continues the tradition when his company dances the world premiere of “The Euterpides.”
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The New York City Ballet mounted no premieres this spring, unless you count the stage adaptation of Kyle Abraham’s Covid lockdown film “When We Fell.” Instead, the company drummed up hype by packing the season with debuts in dances both newish and old.
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One of the most important questions for any director who inherits a dance company from its founding choreographer is how to keep the repertory alive.
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Bill T. Jones wriggles upstage on his back in a rectangle of light, reciting an unsent letter to the New York Times dance critic Jack Anderson.
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The annual Dancing the Gods Festival of Indian Dance celebrated its fourteenth and final year with a generous finale May 16-18. This final event extended for three evenings instead of the usual two.
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Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something “Blue.” The premise of Australasian Dance Collective’s fortieth anniversary celebration stems from the traditional divisions of time.
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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