World-class review of ballet and dance.
In a context such as the Venice Biennale, where you can easily run into ballet stars across the Arsenale and dance alongside them in workshops, it felt especially apt to pay tribute to a filmmaker who, with extraordinary care, intelligence and unsentimental clarity, brought us so close to the hidden mechanics of dance: Frederick Wiseman.
Continue Reading
Launched in 2020 after the hashtag #maleballerina went viral, Ballet22 is driven by a mission all the more urgent since the current presidential administration resumed its attacks on the LGBTQ community.
Continue Reading
The way Margaret Jenkins tells it, Dianne came to her dance company’s studios in 1973, asking to take class. Dianne was then living in a one-bedroom apartment near San Francisco’s Mission District with her scientist husband and three young kids.
FREE ARTICLE
Waiting in the theater, the first unhurried trickle of French composer Erik Satie’s piano variation barely registers amidst the house chatter. Sparse and minimalistic, swelling with silences, the striking keys eventually conjure up a dancer.
Continue Reading
“When you visit Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, you realise that this is a place where time does not exist,” writes choreographer Frances Rings in her notes for Terrain, and the resonance with Wayne McGregor’s theme for the 2026 Biennale Danza, Time Does Not Exist, is unmistakable.
Continue Reading
It starts out light and coquettish. George Balanchine’s “Sonatine,” set to the composition by Maurice Ravel of the same name, is undeniably lighthearted, as the dancers—here, Léonore Baulac and Germain Louvet—find themselves animated by the music, as they share the stage with a grand piano (and pianist Elena Bonnay at its helm).
Continue Reading
When I say this work from Hofesh Shechter set my thoughts adrift, I don’t mean that the performance failed to capture my attention.
Continue Reading
Goodbyes are often tearful. As Kun-Yang Lin’s Philly-based dance company, KYL/D, gave its final performance at the Mandell Theater this spring, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably. This was it.
Continue Reading
Shen Wei is a master mover between worlds—between East and West, between choreography and painting, between process and product, between the physical and the spiritual, and I could go on.
Continue Reading
Rudolf Nureyev’s “Don Quixote” is a long-running ballet in La Scala’s repertoire, periodically revived and performed on tour.
Continue Reading
Even in stillness, there is energy. When the stage lights up on Cassandra Trenary, the dancer is already quivering, muscles tensed, as if gearing up for a fight. That is precisely what ensues.
Continue Reading
Cell phones and motorcycle headlights illuminated the stage at the Teatro América during a recent performance of the ballet company ProDanza. When the music also failed, audience members joined dancers in singing along, ensuring the show could go on.
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.
Continue Reading
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.
Continue Reading