World-class review of ballet and dance.
At first glance, everything in Salt Lake City, Utah’s Jeanne Wagner Theatre looks relatively typical. Rows of red velvet seats line the two aisles that lead to a dimly lit proscenium stage. Audience members chat in hushed tones as they take their seats. Ushers shuffle programs as they prepare for the show to begin.
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While performing arts organizations around the globe were decidedly hard hit by Covid-19 during the last 15 months, dancers and choreographers, whose physical bodies are literally on the line in their work, suffered particularly severe losses. Enter, then, Kristy Edmunds, executive and artistic director of CAP UCLA, a position she’s held since 2011, and one that has provided a platform for critical innovators in all disciplines of artistic practice.
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When asked whether she’s ever had to perform in a work she didn’t agree with or believe in, Penny Wildman’s typically bubbly and lighthearted tone grows ever so slightly vehement. “All the time,” she replies. “All the time.”
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With eyes closed, Blakeley White-McGuire and Daniel Fetecua Soto felt stones on their bare feet and the sun on their cheeks, but most of all, they felt each other. Taking turns guiding as the other moved blindly, the modern dance stars made their way through the Sacred Labyrinth on Block Island, RI, and into “The Tongue of the Flame,” what would become their new intimate dance theater duet.
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On April 22, Moscow’s Concert Hall “Zaryadye” hosted the award ceremony of the winners of the XXVII Golden Mask Award. The three-hour-long celebration took place before a limited-capacity live audience and was streamed via various online platforms of the festival.
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The Bolshoi Ballet recently unveiled a world premiere of “Orlando”—a two-act ballet based on the famous novel by English writer Virginia Woolf. The premiere took place on the Bolshoi Theater’s New Stage on March 24, with the cast led by the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina, Olga Smirnova, in the title role. The ballet was choreographed by Christian Spuck, a German dance-maker, who is currently artistic director of Ballet Zurich.
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Pascal Merighi’s raffish confidence dazzled when I first saw him dance in Pina Bausch’s “For the Children of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He all but hurled dancer Ditta Miranda Jasjfi around his waist as if she were a lifeless rag doll.
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Lillian Barbeito is a dancer, first and foremost. But beyond that, she’s a mover. Perhaps this is why when she has an idea, she can’t sit still. And when she devotes herself to bringing these ideas to life, she doesn’t do it halfway.
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On Thursday, December 3, in honour of the United Nations’ International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the New York City-based, physically integrated dance company Heidi Latsky Dance (HLD) will host an immersive durational performance and living installation “On Display Global” (ODG), in partnership with the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and United Nations. For 24 hours, from midnight to midnight Eastern Standard Time, audiences can tune into Zoom to watch participants from over 100 cities take part in the performance.
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In this era, when we think of dance and the body, we often overlook the material accoutrements and technologies that support and enhance performance. Fortunately, there are many dancers, choreographers, companies and performers who explore the body and its ‘mechanical’ extensions.
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It's being mooted that Tokyo, and Japan as a whole, escaped the full brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic and its catastrophic effect on the world's population and global economy. The number of cases is relatively low when compared to Europe and the US, and the number of deaths or serious cases decreasing daily. When Yuriko Koike, Governor of Tokyo, introduced a lockdown in the spring of 2020 the city became a wasteland for a few months with most people working from home and bars, restaurants and retail stores either closed, operating on limited opening hours or completely empty.
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On September 10th, the Bolshoi Theater opened its 245th ballet season with a surprising premiere. “Four Characters in Search of a Plot” ("Четыре персонажа в поисках сюжета") featured four young international choreographers, making their debut with Russia’s esteemed ballet troupe. Commissioned were an hour-long piece,“The Ninth Wave” by Bryan Arias (Puerto Rico) and three 15-minute works, “Just” by Simone Valastro (Italy), “Fading” by Dimo Milev (Bulgaria) and “Silentium” by Martin Chaix (France).
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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