Love, Lust and Death
Rambert are a formidable, ambitious company indeed. Who else could dance to soundtracks as diverse as Scanner, Arnold Schoenberg and South American pan pipes, all on the same bill?
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Flowing fabric and ink
It is always an exhilarating experience to leave a dance concert eagerly chatting in agreement with those around you about that one favorite piece. Yet it is perhaps the sign of an even stronger concert when those around you are instead in amicable disagreement, each passionately arguing why his or her favorite piece was the “one.” So was the case with Jessica Lang Dance, presented by Celebrity Series of Boston at the Boch Center Shubert Theatre last week. Highlighting six works from 2006-16, the concert offered a satisfying range of visual intrigue—from the purity of a Bach-accompanied solo with an...
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Sadler's Wells Sampled
For the past decade, Sadler’s Wells has kicked off each year with “Sampled,” a two-hour tasting menu of the London dance house’s diverse programming. The show is aimed at new and existing audiences alike, and features snippets from both past commissions and upcoming premieres. Eight performances were on offer for 2017, including ballet, tap and tango numbers, plus a smattering of pre- and post-show music, demonstrations and workshops. The line-up wasn’t as strong as in previous years, but it was high-spirited and suitably varied, celebrating the range of dance styles Sadler’s promotes.
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A Bowie Kaleidoscope
“The Bowie Project,” the brainchild of Austin-based choreographer Andrea Ariel, whose other credits include the choreography for the film Waiting for Guffman and a three-part dance-theatre series on the floating garbage patch in the North Pacific Gyre, was an exercise in personae, layering, fragmenting, and improvisation. The performance, which incorporated three dancers, the David Bowie tribute band Super Creeps, and three members of New York’s Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble, utilized Soundpainting, a “composing sign language” invented by musician Walter Thompson. Working with Thompson, Ariel adapted and expanded the vocabulary of music-focused conducting gestures—they look a bit like the gestures one...
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Silent Disco
Singing and dancing together usually add up to fun. Musicals, Broadway and Hollywood's golden era, are bound to put a spring in your step and a song on your lips. Recently, Damien Chazelle's award winning La La Land with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone tapping and singing sweetly shows reverence for the coupling and says we're willing to abandon ourselves to song and dance yet.
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Short Stories
George Balanchine was a supreme master of choreographic abstraction, yet when he wanted to tell a story he did so with relish and theatrical flair, shaping his narratives with unique dramatic insight and wit. New York City Ballet’s “Balanchine Short Stories”—a triple bill featuring “La Sonnambula,” “Prodigal Son,” and “Firebird”—offered the audience a fascinating journey into the world of Balanchine’s storytelling.
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Daring and Romance
“Allegro Brillante,” “Swan Lake,” and “The Four Temperaments” comprised the all-Balanchine bill which New York City Ballet presented during its six-week winter season at David H. Koch Theater. A perfect Balanchine sampler, the program was golden from start to finish, offering something for every taste: an effervescent classical abstraction, a heartbreaking romance and a spellbinding foray into modernism.
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A Civil Affair
More than three decades at the helm of San Francisco Ballet has sharply attuned Helgi Tomasson to the political mood of his high society season opening gala attendees.
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A Beautiful Vision
Jean-Guillaume Bart isn’t one of those nostalgic choreographers, nor is he a French Ratmansky. He’s more of a ballet archeologist crossed with a dance philosopher, influenced by Paul Valéry. He doesn’t really revive steps from the past (most of the steps are his own invention), his concern is to bring a dying tradition alive. A tradition that is dear to his heart and a spirit that is nowhere to be seen on the world stage must be restored. According to him, now an empty art, ballet should make sense. Every move has to be infused with an inner meaning, aesthetically...
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Elements in Motion
World Music/CRASHarts is known for bringing exceptional artists to Boston’s stages for their local debuts, and although it turns out that ODC/Dance made one prior Boston appearance 45 years ago, this concert once again offered local audiences a taste of something new—this time, coming from San Francisco, CA.
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Irreverence, in Coats
Where there is futility and restlessness, there can also be hope, depth, love, honor, and plenty of humor—this emerged as a thesis of “Loose Gravel,” a collection of more than thirty vignettes of dance, movement, theatre, and absurdity. It was the ambitious first performance of Frank Wo/Men Collective, a new group of Austin- and New York City–based artists, most of them alumni and students of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin. Contemplative, skilled, inventive, and often hilarious, the two-hour performance, collaboratively developed by the seven-member collective, was a heartening beginning to 2017.
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Golden Moments
In dance, at least, 2016 had plenty to offer. From the reviews of others, it seems that I missed some of those shows considered the best of the year (poor holiday timing on my part) but I’m hoping that I’ll get another chance to see Michael Keegan-Dolan’s “Swan Lake/Loch na hEala” (a re-working of “Swan Lake”), Akram Khan’s “Giselle” and Matthew Bourne’s latest ballet, “The Red Shoes.” In the end, my favourite shows come down to personal choice so, when looking back through all the performances I have been fortunate to see, these are the ones that jumped out of...
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Spellbound
Two performers crawl in on hands and knees wearing neon green, hooded coveralls—the lightweight papery kind made for working in a sterile environment—and clusters of balloons pinned to their backs.
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Green Light
Will Rawls makes boundaries visible by defying them. Known for the disciplinary and topical range of his projects, the choreographer, director, and performer approaches issues of representation in “[siccer],” a multi-part, multi-site work co-presented by L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival. A live performance at Performance Space New York...
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It is always interesting when multiple theme steps emerge over the course of a mixed repertory evening, but it is uncanny on one featuring five different ballets, each with a different choreographer and composer, covering a twenty-year span (2005-2025).
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Of Dandelions and Resilience
Zvidance premiered its new work “Dandelion” mid-November at New York Live Arts. Founded by Zvi Gotheiner in 1989, Zvidance has been a steady presence in the New York contemporary dance scene, a reliable source of compositional integrity, and a magnet for wonderful dancers.
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The Music Within
Cleveland native Dianne McIntrye received a hometown hero's welcome during her curtain speech prior to her eponymous dance group thrilling the audience in her latest work, “In the Same Tongue.”
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