World-class review of ballet and dance.
Sprinkled throughout Liz Lerman’s most recent book, Shape and Momentum, are references to witches. They are our companions and guides, and they come bearing spells and poetry culled from Lerman’s 10-year choreographic project, “Wicked Bodies.”
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Midway through the new book Nonstop Bodies: How Dance Shaped New York City, author Rennie McDougall pivots away from a chapter on the modernism of George Balanchine and the slum-clearing process of creating his “temple at Lincoln Center” to flesh out another diasporic music and dance culture emanating out of Harlem during a similar time in history: mambo.
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Near the end of her illuminating book on choreographer Buddy Bradley, Maureen Footer discusses Bradley’s work on Cecil Landau’s revue “Sauce Tartare.”
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The legacy of George Balanchine will be forever entwined with the enduring fiefdoms he established, the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet.
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In the summer of 2007, writer Stephen Manes, known for his best-selling Bill Gates biography, over thirty books for young adults and children, and for his work as a technology columnist, proposed a new endeavor. He wished to spend an entire season at Pacific Northwest Ballet to observe like a fly on the wall and capture in written word a world of which most people will never catch a glimpse.
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Martha Graham said that “movement never lies”—but what of stillness? For NYC Dance Project’s latest book, Martha Graham Dance Company: 100 Years, photographers Ken Browar and Deborah Ory set out to explore Martha Graham’s legacy through photos.
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Sara Veale’s new book Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance (Faber & Faber) examines the lives of nine boldly subversive dancemakers over nearly a century, starting with Isadora Duncan and ending with Pearl Lang. Along the way, it provides a pared but potent mini-history on the emergence of women’s rights.
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During her 15 years dancing with American Ballet Theatre, Melanie Hamrick always brought a book to rehearsal. “Sometimes if it wasn’t my cast—and because I’d done “Swan Lake” so many times—I’d try to sneak a book in my lap,” she remembers.
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In her new biography, The Swans of Harlem, journalist Karen Valby is witness to the testimony of five pioneering Black ballerinas intimate with the founding history of Dance Theatre of Harlem.
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In Deborah Jowitt’s new biography of Martha Graham, Errand into the Maze, the iconic dancer and choreographer is made new, and radical, again.
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Thinking of a ballet-world novel, there are certain things that might come to mind: an illicit relationship between a young female dancer and a (usually significantly) older male choreographer, a backstabbing betrayal between dancers who compete for said choreographer’s attention, glass in pointe shoes as revenge . . . You know the drill. All these tropes—and more—are thrown out the window in Chloe Angyal’s debut novel, Pas de Don’t.
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Broadway Bodies is dedicated to “anyone who has ever been told they were too fat, too short, too gay, too disabled, and otherwise too much or not enough to be in a musical.” The book, written by musical theater scholar Ryan Donovan, examines the ways different aspects of identity have historically affected casting on the Great White Way, using shows like A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls, and La Cage aux Folles as case studies to illustrate the issues that arise when bodies are used as an artistic medium.
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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