All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 61

Latest

REVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

A Show of Strength

There were high expectations for Staatsballett Berlin’s double bill featuring two well-known choreographers, Alexander Ekman and Sharon Eyal. “Lib,” which stands for Liberty, by Alexander Ekman is a collaboration with hair designer and artist Charlie Le Mindu: In fact, the evening opens with a man wearing a long vertical wig on his head, seated in the auditorium, while the spectators take their places. The performance has already started but only some realise it. He slowly and casually moves towards the stage and once there he entertains with some foolish movements and poses. Then, one by one, four graceful dancers enter...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

L.A. Dances Festival

Seeing dance up close and personal can be something thrilling—as long as the choreography and performers are up to terpsichorean snuff. That was mostly the case when the 12-member L.A. Dance Project performed Program C as part of its L.A. Dances Festival that ran for 10 days in November (Programs A and B ran September 26-October 25). A bold undertaking by the troupe founded by Benjamin Millepied in 2012, the festival featured six world premieres, 10 works and one revival.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

The Creative, the Curious and the Courtly

There are two very distinct strands to Richard Alston's choreography. The first is a provocative, experimental path, where Alston's eccentric musical choices dictate the shifts and twists within. The second is a more classical, traditional route. Yet, both are never too sentimental or frilly, in spite of the craftsmanship. His is a “get on with it” approach, and there is an enormous amount of heart and humour, so it's really heartbreaking to think there have been recent cuts to the company, and they're winding down.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

A Haunting

At once an art installation and dance piece, “Ghost Dimensions” cannot easily be pigeonholed or put into neat niche categories. It works almost like a puzzle, split into two halves with the incredible design by Tseliso Monaheng projected onto two sheets. It’s all about duality. These two component parts can be experienced by the audience in one sitting from one side of the room, or explored around the other. One side is rendered in neon colours, showing cityscapes, obscure figures and trees; the other is in negative like a reversal of the production. Both sides of the images meet up...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Remembering Merce

Merce Cunningham would have turned 100 in 2019, a centennial that’s seen institutions around the world flock to commemorate the prodigious American choreographer. There have been exhibitions, seminars, master classes and of course performances, including the ambitious “Night of 100 Solos,” commissioned by the Merce Cunningham Trust and featuring 75 artists dancing in tandem across three cities.

REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

World Premieres

Five years into his appointment as artistic director, former American Ballet Theatre star, Ángel Corella challenges the Pennsylvania Ballet’s cadre to surpass themselves each new season. Adding demi-soloist and first soloist last spring gives him 23 dancers above the corps and a freer hand in casting for each ballet. The result is a faster, sleeker look on the entire company from corps to principal dancer.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

One by One

The sky turns red to the sailors’ delight, caused by the setting sun dispatching its light through a high concentration of dust particles: good weather will follow. I ascend the stairs of Dancehouse for my second taste of swiss.style, with grass on my heels, my Quarries Park “Trophy”-marker.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Taking Sides

“Ping.” “Tink.” “Chick-o-wee.” In the late afternoon, Quarries Park, Clifton Hill, is a wonderful chorus of bird calls and a whirl of neighbourhood activity. The sun doesn’t set for another two hours yet. The golden light where everything appears rimmed by a halo or to glow softly is approaching. In anticipation, the high-pitched trills and the soft churring “kreeeark” of birds. And at the foot of the park, a knot of people gathers for Rudi van der Merwe’s “Trophy,” presented by Dancehouse as part of swiss.style, a focus on dance from Switzerland for the first ten days of November. In...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Sixties Swing

The Royal Ballet’s first mixed bill of the 2019/20 season is a snapshot of 1960s British ballet and the polar places it went. Sandwiched between a spare modern creation and a frothy classical revival are bouncy character variations set to a turn-of-the-century orchestral work—slightly mismatched courses, sure, but an interesting snapshot of the company’s mid-century catalogue, plus a chance to see the Royal’s robust solo talent in action.

REVIEWS | By Claudia Lawson

A Step in Time

Sydney Dance Company’s second program marking their 50th anniversary year is “Bonachela/Obarzanek.” This double bill celebrates the company’s history as laid out by its dancers and choreographers, and also the cultural contribution SDC has made to the contemporary dance scene in Australia and around the world.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

New Ventures

Birmingham Royal Ballet is on a creative commissioning spree. Set on widening its audience at home and away, the company has been funnelling resources into a range of choreographic initiatives and collaborations, and its shows are looking sharper for it.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Hypervigilant

There is an itchy sense of restlessness to Emanuel Gat's ephemeral piece with Scottish Dance Theatre, a heightened kind of hypervigilance with a dozen dancers onstage always looking over their shoulders. They appear primed to pounce at any time, all too aware of lurking predators. It's there in Gat's lighting design, which is hugely evocative of twilight corners. It's woven into the alertness of eyes, the scratchy shapes of arachnid hands twitching in the air and protective hunches on haunches, the groups of two or three, rearing up like horses on hind legs. This “fight or flight” stance is a...

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.