World-class review of ballet and dance.
Terry Beck first saw Hellmut Gottschild’s Zero Moving dance company as a student at Temple University in the ’70s. Beck was working towards a teaching degree in Special Education and took a work study gig as a glass box technician.
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Whether bending backwards as if channeling Paul Chavez’ otherworldly sounding music, or crouching down ever so slowly and quasi-teetering on the floor, dancer Roxanne Steinberg proved a master of the body.
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On opening night of the world premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s “Oscar” at the Australian Ballet’s new home for the next three years, the Regent Theatre (as the State Theatre undergoes renovations), I am catapulted from September 13, 2024 to April 26, 1885, and the commencement of the trial of Oscar Wilde.
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New York City Ballet concluded its 75th anniversary year with its traditional summer residency upstate at the amphitheater of Saratoga Springs’s Performing Arts Center (SPAC).
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Before digital audio, compact discs, cassette tapes with their ribbons of sound sandwiched within a small case, and pressed vinyl records, came wax cylinders to record and reproduce sound, thanks to Thomas Edison’s 1877 invention of the hand-cranked phonograph.
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Far from Southern Spain, but in the heart of Hollywood, that once monthly dance staple, “Forever Flamenco,” was alive and well again at the Fountain Theatre, if only for the month of August.
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Since 1980, the Australian Ballet's National Tour (or really, the Dancers' Company as everyone calls it), is a much anticipated event for the graduating students of the Australian Ballet School.
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Every year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I look forward to the Taiwan Season. A curated selection of shows within the organised chaos of the festival, the quality of the dancing is always exemplary. I caught two out of the four shows of this season’s offering.
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How often have you sat in a dance piece that felt too long? Lewis Major’s “Triptych” successfully rises to the challenge of creating an evening of dance, without overstretching an idea into boredom.
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Dance aficionados are on high alert any time there’s a new Bill T. Jones work. That the artistic director/co-founder and choreographer of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company did not make dances for “The Motherboard Suite,” but directed it, still made for a solid evening of dance drama.
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The temperature rose again on Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles’ celebrated outdoor venue, when Spanish-American conductor François López-Ferrer brought the heat to the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program dubbed “Symphonic Tango & Flamenco.”
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“Life is a thief,” pouts Alan Greig, emerging in the studio space clad in black vest, full skirt and voluminous trousers. Impish and imperious, he becomes Tennessee Williams in waspish mode even as he lies dying, or perhaps he's Blanche Dubois, looking to fill the void.
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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