World-class review of ballet and dance.
For performing arts aficionados, summer in Los Angeles can mean only one thing: wining and dining under the stars at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, where a ticket can still be snagged for—yes—a buck. Currently celebrating its 100-year anniversary, the outdoor venue and summer home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with its 1927 Lloyd Wright-designed shell that has since undergone several incarnations, has been the backdrop for boldfaced names of all stripes.
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Philadelphia’s 17-year young BalletX has gifted the city with more than 100 world premiere contemporary ballets and then taken them on the road around the nation. Known for commissioning emerging and established choreographers from many countries, it has had some great successes. Among them, Rena Butler’s breathless “The Under Way,” which Covid relegated to film, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s staggeringly original “Castrati,” Tobin Del Cuore’s marvelous “Beside Myself,” and numerous delights from its co-founder and long-time resident choreographer for the Philadelphia Ballet, Matthew Neenan. Not to mention choreographers of the stature of Nicolo Fonte, Kevin O’Day, and the inimitable Jodie Gates...
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When the inclination is to create, as the award-winning choreographer Amy Seiwert says, “the most brilliant thing that anyone’s ever seen,” what happens when you’re given permission to be less than perfect? This is one question the Michael Smuin protégée who went on to direct the Sacramento Ballet for two seasons is asking with her innovative series, Sketch. For the project’s twelfth iteration, Seiwert invited Natasha Adorlee, formerly of ODC/Dance and Robert Moses’ Kin; and rising star, Joshua L. Peugh, founder of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, to join her with a group of eight stellar dance artists to create new works...
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Australasian Dance Collective finally presented its second iteration of the triple bill “Three” to a very eager audience. Originally slated to be performed back in February, the Brisbane floods caused the production to be halted in its tracks. Mid-tech rehearsal everything stopped—the dancers were evacuated, the theatre flooded, and people patiently waited to hear about the future of “Three.” Thankfully, nearly five months later, the production was staged in all its sensory splendour, and audiences flocked to the theatre to support the three new Australian works.
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Even despite countless efforts not to, the concert dance world can feel inaccessible. At its most avant-garde, the form can come off as niche, esoteric, and difficult to understand, especially to those without a background in it. Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love,” turns all these assumptions on their head.
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A single dancer commands the stage, her arms and legs lithely carving the space as the words of Gloria Anzaldúa’s poem “To Live In The Borderlands Means You,” simultaneously sculpt the air. A ballerina’s nimble fingertips etch lines in the sky as she dances with her partner in an ethereal, heart-wrenching pas de deux. Men in intricately embroidered jackets tap out a percussive and precise zapateado. Women in brightly colored skirts move together with force, muskets in hand. Ballet Nepantla’s “Valentina,” which was presented in an abridged version on July 13 at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Henry J. Leir Outdoor...
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In a season dominated by old standbys, Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” stands out as one of American Ballet Theatre’s most evergreen. The production fits the company like an old glove, perhaps not as sleek as it once was, but still handsome and well made. The pas de deux—around which the ballet is built—have ingrained themselves in the audience’s collective consciousness. Everyone knows what comes next. Their steps melt into waves, that is, until the moments in which Romeo holds Juliet aloft, or the two dancers face each other in total stillness, barely touching. As if on cue, the audience...
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Big leaps, big smiles, big energy—Carlos Acosta’s new “Don Quixote” for Birmingham Royal Ballet does its darndest to capture the larger-than-life spirit of Petipa’s nineteenth-century classic. There are glittering costumes, merry character dances, silk fans swizzling, flamenco-style. There’s no runaway windmill, like in the 2013 version Acosta mounted for the Royal Ballet, but Tim Hatley’s starburst stage design sports its own wow factors, including a luscious velveteen colour palette.
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A healthy-sized crowd swarmed ODC Theater’s lobby for SFDanceworks’ closing matinee in the Mission District, and word from the box office was that attendance the previous nights had been robust. This was happy news for San Francisco dance fans who appreciate a Nederlands Dans Theater-esque aesthetic: sleek, spine-roiling movement, virtuosic in balletic ways yet weighted, often set to contemporary music with a tinge of the ominous and intellectual.
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The Metropolitan Opera stage, awash in harsh lights and a roughly patterned backdrop, almost felt industrial when the curtain rose on Alonzo King’s “Single Eye.” But as dancers appeared in pale aqua velvet leotards, the stage softened. Then, it began to feel more vulnerable and intimate, as principal dancers Christine Shevchenko and Thomas Forster performed a pas de deux full of gorgeously fluid movements between geometrical positions.
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A ballet as famed and often performed as “Swan Lake” comes with both high expectations and the risk of losing its lustre, making it both a rite of passage and a continuing challenge for dancers at all points of their careers. Audiences were able to see both in action in American Ballet Theatre’s recent 12-show run of “Swan Lake,” where dancers both debuted and revisited the iconic roles of Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried.
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Sometimes a work of art can be compelling for its strict adherence to the rules of a given form, for the comfort and beauty that can be found in a virtuosity we already know how to gauge. Classical ballet is rife with examples of this sort. Other times, a spirit of rebellion or failure to conform can provide a kind of satisfying spaciousness—an atmosphere in which we are dazzled not just by what our eyes are seeing but by what we might imagine going forward. On Thursday, June 30th, 2022, at the Joyce Theater, Christopher Williams Dances had moments of...
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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