All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 47

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REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

About Time

Twyla Tharp is 80-years old this year, and even with an epic, half-century dance career behind her, the legendary choreographer is just as busy as ever. Throughout the pandemic, Tharp has been hard at work experimenting over zoom; recently, she stepped back into the studio to work with lead dancers from American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, as well as a group of young dancers she hand-picked, to create “Twyla NOW,” a program that matched two world premieres with two older pieces from the choreographer's vast repertoire in celebration of her birthday.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Care

It may seem strange for all of the supposed progress being made in understanding medical matters that there is still a societal stigma in how we lean into issues around mental health in 2021. Creating an effective discourse around it, in order to normalise it, is incredibly important. Art is a great platform for tackling big issues, such as depression and anxiety. Dance, then, can express with bodies something that can be hard to say out loud, for fear of othering, rejection, or being cast aside, either from friends, loved ones, or employers in a working environment.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Fiery Heart of Flamenco

It was a first for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but hopefully not the last: Under the artistic direction of flamenco artist and dancer extraordinaire, María Bermúdez, the Fiesta de la Bulería Jerez, one of the most prestigious events in all of Spain, came Stateside, its performers scorching the stage of Walt Disney Concert Hall. And throughout the nearly three-hour love-fest, the dozen artists collectively known as Sonidos Gitanos (Gypsy Sounds), raised the temperature from hot to blistering, the sold-out crowd continually jumping to its feet as if possessed.

REVIEWS | By Claudia Lawson

New Voices

For the first time since February, the Sydney Dance Company is performing live in Sydney with “New Breed 2021.” One year ago, I wrote the same sentence about the premiere of “New Breed 2020.” The performing arts had just endured what we thought would be their hardest year to date. But Covid-19 had other plans, and here we are again. This time we’re back, more weathered, masks firmly fitted, vaccination certificates at the ready. The crowd moves differently, everyone keeps just slightly more to themselves, eyes lower if shoulders accidentally brush on the way to seats. There is a sense...

REVIEWS | By Josephine Minhinnett

A Light Touch

What does dance and the car of the future have in common? In a warehouse of the former Toronto Star printing press, restyled as the Lighthouse Immersive Artspace at the city’s waterfront, the world premiere “Touch” from Côté Danse and Montreal multimedia artist Thomas Payette turns the technology of self-driving vehicles into a vehicle for an experiential multimedia dance installation.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Heavenly Dancing

It’s rare to encounter an artistic director’s program note offering more than generic greetings, yet I always read Peter Boal’s opening thoughts before pressing “play” on a Pacific Northwest Ballet program. (Happily the company has continued to offer a digital season alongside its return to the live stage.) To introduce this second mixed-rep bill, Boal could have angled for “relevance” and stressed how Ulysses Dove’s “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven” connects to our moment of grief in the wake of the pandemic. But Boal is more personal and specific and less crudely calculating than that. He writes instead...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Dancing with Joy

Emerging from the global pandemic, which brought isolation, fear and, most tragically, death to so many, has indeed given us new reasons to enjoy simple things—the human connection, a hug, embracing hope again. And so it was with dancer/choreographer Danielle Agami’s world premiere, “Joy.” Performed by her Los Angeles-based Ate9 troupe at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (a special shout-out to the Wallis’ artistic director Paul Crewes, who departs his position at the end of the year but who has given local dance a position of prominence over his tenure), the work lived up to its name...

REVIEWS | By Valentina Bonelli

Red and Black

Entire generations have grown up reading Le Rouge et le Noir, finding in the 1830 novel by Stendhal a Bildungsroman and in Julian Sorel an alter ego for our own aspirations of career and love. For those who would like to find again that esprit de jeunesse, Pierre Lacotte’s “Le Rouge et le Noir” is a ballet not to be missed. Obviously, they have to be fond of those grands ballets in classic style that no choreographer stages anymore. Monsieur Lacotte is probably the last one, a specialist of that kind, who at 90 years of age was able to...

REVIEWS | By Ilena Peng

An American Icon

As Tony Bennett sang, the curtain rose on silhouetted dancers dressed in all black and in whimsical monochrome polka-dotted tutus. Then the three female leads in Jessica Lang’s new work “ZigZag” whirled onstage in bursts of yellow, blue and pink tulle designed by Wes Gordon for Carolina Herrera. What came next was an infectiously joyful, yet nostalgic performance, filled with its fair share of jazzy shimmies and finger snaps.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Time for Love

It’s no accident that dancer/choreographer Micaela Taylor named her troupe The TL Collective, the ‘TL’ short for ‘To Love,’ because watching this standout performer in her own works, one instantly falls in love with her. Indeed, with Taylor, who is decidedly the complete package, another word comes to mind: Star, with a capital ‘S.’ And so it was that this magnetic performer and her troupe of seven shredded the stage at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Friday with three works, including a world premiere, “Time.”

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Joy, Perseverance, and Power

Opening night of Martha Graham Dance Company’s run at the Joyce Theater was a momentous occasion. Not only did this engagement mark the MGDC’s return to live performance in its home city—a milestone nearly every other marquee company based in New York City has been celebrating this fall—it was also the start of the company’s 96th season. On Tuesday October 26, 2021, the company dancers were in fine form despite more than a year of pandemic protocols, carrying on Martha Graham’s legacy with technical virtuosity and dramatic intensity.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Full Bloom

Every year, City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival offers true medley programming, with hit-or-miss results. But the fifth and final program of this year’s festival was strong from start to finish. Talented young Roman Mejia (New York City Ballet’s newest soloist) kicked off the show by stepping into “Fandango,” a gypsy solo Alexei Ratmansky choreographed for Wendy Whelan in 2010. It has also been danced before by Sara Mearns, but Mejia is the first male to take it on. It was somewhat reworked for Mejia—the women did not perform such aerial manèges—but many of the steps were left unaltered and...

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

Teenage Angst and Institutions

Watching 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,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

The Me of Today

The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

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.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

America, F**K Yeah

After 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.

REVIEWS | Emily May

Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup

An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.