All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 58

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REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

The Sweetest Witching Hour

On March 23, 2020, the Royal New Zealand Ballet announced the suspension of all rehearsals, performances, and community events until the spring—the company joining an ever-growing list of arts organisations affected by Covid-19. The future of their 2020 season now in doubt. “Venus Rising,” due to premiere in May, has been postponed until August. “The Sleeping Beauty” remains tentatively programmed for October, and “Dangerous Liaison” has been removed from the current season entirely.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

The Ferryman

Belgian-French choreographer, dancer and performer Damien Jalet's extraordinary works seem to be not quite of this Earth: they are comprised of a not altogether human landscape, a liminal space of knotted limbs. His complex choreography creates a fleshy mass that means his dancers are more akin to animals. He others the corporeal, wherein it often becomes hard to differentiate between plant and mammal. Bodies entwine and hands grasp like pincers or gnarled tree branches. At times, the spectator is reminded of paintings, either from Goya who referenced the horrors of civil war, or Francis Bacon's Screaming Popes. This is uncomfortable, visceral...

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Róisín O'Brien

Making a Statement

What is the friction between words and movement? What does one give us that the other doesn’t? If there is an intelligence in movement and physicality that cannot be expressed through words, do we look down on that intelligence?

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Amidst Darkness, A Dream

March 6, 2020 was not an ordinary opening night at San Francisco Ballet. Some patrons inside the War Memorial Opera House wore hospital masks; others counseled fellow audience members to wash their hands a full 20 seconds in the bathroom at intermission. Onstage, the performers in Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”—not staged at SFB in 34 years—danced as though this were their last night before lockdown, and in the velvet seats, the audience applauded as though we would never see these dancers again. We headed home with our memories of an exquisite performance. And as we slept, the order came:...

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Comedy & Corruption

There is a striking clarity and intelligence with which Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young approach narrative. Their combination of choreographer and actor/writer/director is not only dance-theatre gold, but allows for an incredibly rich interplay between words and movement.

REVIEWS | By Kosta Karakashyan

Bold New Steps

We enter DNK: Space for contemporary dance and performance, and right at the door we are greeted by the three co-creators and performers Aleksandar Georgiev, Zhana Pencheva and Darío Barreto Damas. Smiling and warming up, the dancers thank us for attending the Sofia premiere of their new piece, “dragON aka PONY.”

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Swell of Legacy

Watching Richard Alston Dance Company perform is like visiting a Rothko exhibition. It’s tidy, bright and expressive, confident in what it is and isn’t. And it’s vividly abstract; you can drink in its colour and energy without the heft of narrative interpretation. With an Alston production you have the bonus of musicality, which the dancemaker excels at. On the other hand, ephemerality is part and parcel of the experience. The fleeting nature of dance takes on an outsized presence in this particular programme, the company’s farewell show after 25 years at the forefront of the UK’s contemporary scene.

REVIEWS | By Claudia Lawson

Creative Strides

Catapult Dance Choreographic Hub launched in Australia’s Hunter Valley just north of Sydney in 2014. Spearheaded by former dancer and dance educator Cadi McCarthy, it champions emerging choreographers, providing the platform that is so elusive for many up-and-coming choreographers, dancers, and composers—space and time to think and create.

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

A Gilded Dream

Modern classism meets childlike wonder in Graeme Murphy’s “The Happy Prince.” Murphy is an undisputed tour de force in Australian ballet. Arguably the most successful choreographer produced by our country, he is known for many of his works including “Air and Other Invisible Forces,” “The Silver Rose,” and, most notably, his restaging of “Swan Lake.” Murphy has also had a long and prosperous relationship with the Australian Ballet, so, to see the company begin their 2020 season with “The Happy Prince” is no great shock. The ballet itself, however, is an oddball of curiosities.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

An Epic Tale

Let’s just call American Ballet Theatre’s world premiere, “Of Love and Rage,” choreographed by the singular Alexei Ratmansky, a terpsichorean orgy of outsized proportions, an all-embracing bacchanalia, if you will.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Tragedy in Black & White

Since it was first written and performed in 1596, Shakespeare’s enduring classic, “Romeo and Juliet”—the doomed romance of two teenagers from feuding families—is possibly the most famous love story ever penned. Indeed, its numerous iterations include operas, films, musicals and, of course, ballets, with indelible performances such as the 1966 Royal Ballet production starring Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, choreographed by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, racking up hundreds of thousands of YouTube views in recent years.

REVIEWS | By Josephine Minhinnett

Seeing in the Dark

I had high expectations going into the National Ballet of Canada’s mixed program on opening night. What was on the table for being the greatest highlight of the evening was Greta Hodgkinson dancing her final role before retirement in the historically star-studded “Marguerite and Armand” (originally created for Fonteyn and Nureyev by Sir Frederick Ashton). The gesture was well-considered to celebrate the ballerina’s 30-year career, but the program did not gel as I had hoped. Alongside the contemporary “Chroma” set to music from the White Stripes and a world premiere by Crystal Pite, the three pieces seemed worlds apart. In...

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.