World-class review of ballet and dance.
Powerhouse: International, the newly launched arts festival in Gowanus, Brooklyn, continued its fall offerings with the multidisciplinary work “Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna,” co-presented with L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival.
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In an animation that is woven through the performances of traditional dances in Indigenous Enterprise’s “Still Here,” a young boy watches a video of powwow musicians and dancers with his grandfather on Youtube.
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It was apropos that I attended choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu’s latest work, “Fragmented Shadows,” just before Halloween.
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Making its long anticipated debut at Sadler’s Wells, “Figures in Extinction" is perhaps the brightest new feather in Nederland Dans Theater’s cap.
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The final program of American Ballet Theatre’s fall season, titled “Innovations Past and Present,” featured the world premiere of Juliano Nunes “Have We Met!?” as well as two company gems: Alexei Ratmansky’s “Serenade after Plato’s Symposium” and George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations.”
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Miriam Miller steps into the center and raises her arm with deliberation, pressing her palm upward to the vaulted Gothic ceiling of the cathedral.
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In a series called “Just Dance” on Nowness—a site I sometimes visit to see what’s up in the world of “genre busting” dance films that make it onto this stylized platform—I sometimes find little gems that quietly rock my world.
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Back in October, New York City Ballet got a new cowboy. His arrival occurred in the final section of George Balanchine’s “Western Symphony.”
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When Richard Move enters from stage left, their presence is already monumental. In a long-sleeved gown, a wig swept in a dramatic topnot, and their eyes lined in striking swoops, the artist presents themself in the likeness of Martha Graham—though standing at 6’4, they have more than a foot on the late modern dance pioneer.
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Perhaps not since Mikhail Fokine’s 1905 iconic “The Dying Swan” has there been as haunting a solo dance depiction of avian death as Aakash Odedra Company’s “Songs of the Bulbul” (2024).
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Dance, at its best, captures nuance particularly well, allowing us to feel deeply and purely. In its wordlessness, it places a primal reliance on movement and embodied knowledge as communication all its own. It can speak directly from the body to the heart, bypassing the brain’s drive to “make sense of.”
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“Racines”—meaning roots—stands as the counterbalance to “Giselle,” the two ballets opening the Paris Opera Ballet’s season this year.
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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