All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 83

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REVIEWS | By Merli V. Guerra

Flowing fabric and ink

It is always an exhilarating experience to leave a dance concert eagerly chatting in agreement with those around you about that one favorite piece. Yet it is perhaps the sign of an even stronger concert when those around you are instead in amicable disagreement, each passionately arguing why his or her favorite piece was the “one.” So was the case with Jessica Lang Dance, presented by Celebrity Series of Boston at the Boch Center Shubert Theatre last week. Highlighting six works from 2006-16, the concert offered a satisfying range of visual intrigue—from the purity of a Bach-accompanied solo with an...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Sadler's Wells Sampled

For the past decade, Sadler’s Wells has kicked off each year with “Sampled,” a two-hour tasting menu of the London dance house’s diverse programming. The show is aimed at new and existing audiences alike, and features snippets from both past commissions and upcoming premieres. Eight performances were on offer for 2017, including ballet, tap and tango numbers, plus a smattering of pre- and post-show music, demonstrations and workshops. The line-up wasn’t as strong as in previous years, but it was high-spirited and suitably varied, celebrating the range of dance styles Sadler’s promotes.

REVIEWS | By Jonelle Seitz

A Bowie Kaleidoscope

“The Bowie Project,” the brainchild of Austin-based choreographer Andrea Ariel, whose other credits include the choreography for the film Waiting for Guffman and a three-part dance-theatre series on the floating garbage patch in the North Pacific Gyre, was an exercise in personae, layering, fragmenting, and improvisation. The performance, which incorporated three dancers, the David Bowie tribute band Super Creeps, and three members of New York’s Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble, utilized Soundpainting, a “composing sign language” invented by musician Walter Thompson. Working with Thompson, Ariel adapted and expanded the vocabulary of music-focused conducting gestures—they look a bit like the gestures one...

REVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Silent Disco

Singing and dancing together usually add up to fun. Musicals, Broadway and Hollywood's golden era, are bound to put a spring in your step and a song on your lips. Recently, Damien Chazelle's award winning La La Land with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone tapping and singing sweetly shows reverence for the coupling and says we're willing to abandon ourselves to song and dance yet.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Short Stories

George Balanchine was a supreme master of choreographic abstraction, yet when he wanted to tell a story he did so with relish and theatrical flair, shaping his narratives with unique dramatic insight and wit. New York City Ballet’s “Balanchine Short Stories”—a triple bill featuring “La Sonnambula,” “Prodigal Son,” and “Firebird”—offered the audience a fascinating journey into the world of Balanchine’s storytelling.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Daring and Romance

“Allegro Brillante,” “Swan Lake,” and “The Four Temperaments” comprised the all-Balanchine bill which New York City Ballet presented during its six-week winter season at David H. Koch Theater. A perfect Balanchine sampler, the program was golden from start to finish, offering something for every taste: an effervescent classical abstraction, a heartbreaking romance and a spellbinding foray into modernism.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

A Civil Affair

More than three decades at the helm of San Francisco Ballet has sharply attuned Helgi Tomasson to the political mood of his high society season opening gala attendees.

REVIEWS | By Jade Larine

A Beautiful Vision

Jean-Guillaume Bart isn’t one of those nostalgic choreographers, nor is he a French Ratmansky. He’s more of a ballet archeologist crossed with a dance philosopher, influenced by Paul Valéry. He doesn’t really revive steps from the past (most of the steps are his own invention), his concern is to bring a dying tradition alive. A tradition that is dear to his heart and a spirit that is nowhere to be seen on the world stage must be restored. According to him, now an empty art, ballet should make sense. Every move has to be infused with an inner meaning, aesthetically...

REVIEWS | By Merli V. Guerra

Elements in Motion

World Music/CRASHarts is known for bringing exceptional artists to Boston’s stages for their local debuts, and although it turns out that ODC/Dance made one prior Boston appearance 45 years ago, this concert once again offered local audiences a taste of something new—this time, coming from San Francisco, CA.

REVIEWS | By Jonelle Seitz

Irreverence, in Coats

Where there is futility and restlessness, there can also be hope, depth, love, honor, and plenty of humor—this emerged as a thesis of “Loose Gravel,” a collection of more than thirty vignettes of dance, movement, theatre, and absurdity. It was the ambitious first performance of Frank Wo/Men Collective, a new group of Austin- and New York City–based artists, most of them alumni and students of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin. Contemplative, skilled, inventive, and often hilarious, the two-hour performance, collaboratively developed by the seven-member collective, was a heartening beginning to 2017.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Elderkin

Golden Moments

In dance, at least, 2016 had plenty to offer. From the reviews of others, it seems that I missed some of those shows considered the best of the year (poor holiday timing on my part) but I’m hoping that I’ll get another chance to see Michael Keegan-Dolan’s “Swan Lake/Loch na hEala” (a re-working of “Swan Lake”), Akram Khan’s “Giselle” and Matthew Bourne’s latest ballet, “The Red Shoes.” In the end, my favourite shows come down to personal choice so, when looking back through all the performances I have been fortunate to see, these are the ones that jumped out of...

REVIEWS | By Rachel Stone

A Fair Nutcracker

Your home is not your home. In its place, a dreamscape of flowers and snow, where dolls can transform into princes and sweets come alive. Victorian bouquets dance, characters travel by hot air balloon, and Christmas trees grow to envelop a stage. Though the story of “The Nutcracker” makes little logical sense, it doesn’t need to; in this fantastical, surreal territory, the strange is somehow familiar, and a little girl can unlock a portal into another world.

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.