World-class review of ballet and dance.
There's an almost disarming delicacy to Curious Seed's work, as evinced by this beautiful, Herald Angel Award-winning production, “And The Birds Did Sing” Christine Devaney, dancing solo for the entire forty-minutes long duration, infuses so much raw emotion into even her micro gestures, that it's deeply heartfelt and moving.
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I went to see “Illinoise” on its last day at the Park Avenue Armory. The Justin Peck production was already set to move to Broadway, and Sufjan Stevens fans were already ecstatic: the singer-songwriter’s deeply felt, ingeniously conceived 2005 album Illinois is not only the impetus and origin of the Peck dancical but also its libretto and score, with a group of wondrous winged singers and multi-instrumental musicians scaffolded above the stage performing the album in its overwhelming entirety, though re-arranged a bit and shuffled.
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A participatory eagerness, a desire to be part of something sweet and beautiful, suffused the return of George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to San Francisco Ballet on the cusp of spring.
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Entering his 10th year as artistic director of Philadelphia Ballet, Ángel Corella put his artists through a ring of fire in their early spring concert at the Academy of Music.
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Mark Morris's “The Look of Love” begins with praise. Dancers stand in a circle facing inward with clasped hands and chests lifted as Burt Bacharach's “What the World Needs Now” resonates in the theatre.
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If you believe, you can make yourself into Cerberus the three-headed dog-like monster, who guards the third circle of Hell, the circle of the gluttons, by buttoning together a couple of oversized shirts, and sitting together with two other people, in a huddle on the floor.
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It is a kaleidoscope of references, a whirligig of Alices, I carry with me to the third Melbourne season of Christopher Wheeldon’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” presented by the Australian Ballet, at the State Theatre in Melbourne.
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Nine hundred years ago in China, a renowned poet-artist named Su Dongpo (1037-1101) lived in Meishan, a city in Sichuan Province. He lived during the Song Dynasty, a prosperous period known for the proliferation of poetry and sophistication in visual arts underpinned by classical Chinese philosophy.
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Talk about your OG—or, in this case, Original Gatsby! Indeed, Los Angeles-based American Contemporary Ballet (ACB) has set the bar(re) oh-so-high, with its Original Gatsby concept/concert, “Jazz,” that even F. Scott Fitzgerald would have dug it.
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Nearly spring and time for lightheartedness or hopefulness, and two of the three women choreographers in BalletX’s spring program gave us some sense of new beginnings.
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Last week as certain ageist opinions were being aired in Washington, D.C., five performers in a tiny NYC East Village theater quietly made a case for the power of creative longevity.
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On the evening of March 7th, New York City Ballet opened a run of shows at Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
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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