Serendipity
There seems to be no clear organizing principle behind the programs at the yearly Fall for Dance festival at New York City Center.
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World-class review of ballet and dance.
There seems to be no clear organizing principle behind the programs at the yearly Fall for Dance festival at New York City Center.
FREE ARTICLEThe fall season at New York City Ballet, devoted to the works of Balanchine, has been full of débuts.
Continue ReadingIf you’ve ever laughed at the wrong moment, or at a joke that wasn’t funny, or to break the tension, then you will appreciate the theme of Shannon Gillen’s “Punch Line,” performed by the physical dance theater group Vim Vigor, that opened the Gibney performance 2023-24 season in September.
Continue ReadingWith a bang it begins, the explosion of a star, on stage at the Playhouse, Arts Centre. Bangarra Dance Theatre’s “Yuldea” has arrived on Wurundjeri Country (Melbourne) with a supernova to outshine entire galaxies, before heading to Bendigo, Djaara Country, for the final quivering leg and jutting arm of shifting gas and particles.
FREE ARTICLEMarking a centenary is always an occasion. And for the Martha Graham Dance Company, which was founded in 1926 and is the oldest dance troupe in America, the festivities have just begun.
Continue ReadingNew York City Center's 80th anniversary features a fall dance season worth celebrating.
Continue ReadingFrom the moment the curtain rose, Queensland Ballet’s “Strictly Gershwin” dazzled.
FREE ARTICLEIn just 17 years, artistic director Christine Cox has taken BalletX from a summer pickup project to a formidable choreographic factory.
Continue ReadingA virulent new strain of Covid is on the rise; democracy is in peril; and the war still rages on in Ukraine. But relief of the highest order came in the form of, “The Missing Mountain.”
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 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, and it pulls no punches.
Continue ReadingOverheard after the curtain drop on “Theme and Variations,” the opener of English National Ballet’s latest mixed bill: “Well, it was very Balanchine!”
Continue ReadingTwo 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.
Continue ReadingWill 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).
Continue ReadingZvidance 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.
Continue ReadingCleveland 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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