World-class review of ballet and dance.
New York City Ballet’s program titled “Here/Now” included a selection of works the company presented during its last season’s spring festival of the same title. This was a winning quadruple bill on all levels, featuring ballets by some of the most prominent choreographers working today: Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, and Justin Peck.
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At its previous performances in North Carolina and New York, Kate Weare’s commanding “Marksman” played in large proscenium theaters, where Clifford Ross’s backdrops of black and grey images suggesting cresting tsunamis loomed high above the six dancers. The effect was lost last weekend in the black box ODC Theater where I saw “Marksman” on the San Francisco stop of its yearlong tour. Here, the dancers were practically near enough to touch, and Ross’s totemic scrolls did not seem so overpowering. But while Weare herself seemed to lament the shift in scale during Friday’s post-performance talk, I wouldn’t have had it...
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What role do imitation and “borrowing” play in developing an artist’s oeuvre? And how, as a viewer, do you separate your perceptions of an artist’s choreography from your awareness of theatrical trends?
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On the surface, these two ballets could not be more contrasting. Yet, what thematically links them is the iconoclastic approach of both Sir Kenneth MacMillan's choreography (this production marks twenty five years of his passing) and the bold invention of Scottish Ballet's own Artistic Director Christopher Hampson—not to mention, of course, the “The Rite Of Spring's” notorious first Parisian performance in 1913, which caused riots.
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“Can an intelligent being comprehend the instructions to make itself?” This is one of the questions at the heart of “Autobiography,” Wayne McGregor’s newest work and the latest in a line of ventures reflecting his fascination with science, particularly genetics. (Just this summer the choreographer teamed up with the Genetics Clinic of the Future to have his entire genome sequenced.) Here ten dancers from McGregor’s London-based company probe his personal memories as well as his actual genetic code to weave a helix of memory, contemplation and speculation.
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When terpsichorean stars align, magic can happen. Such is the case with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, a troupe founded 40 years ago by Lou Conte and directed by the indefatigable Glenn Edgerton since 2009. Edgerton comes to his role with a prestigious pedigree: Having danced 11 years with the Joffrey Ballet before taking the helm at Netherlands Dance Theater for a decade, his curatorial skills are in full flower as he and his 16-member troupe celebrate Hubbard’s four-decade anniversary.
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Before I tell you all about the inaugural Transform Festival, four words: Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project. The name has circulated among San Francisco dance fans since Klaymoon began making hip hop dance theater here in 2010, but so far the group has only toured to Oregon and Kenya, and they should be known everywhere. “Ancient Children,” the closer on the Transform Festival’s penultimate night, simply possesses the stage. The performers are charismatic, the hip-hop dance commanding, the truths delivered unflinching. In case I haven’t been emphatic enough: Call up your local presenter. You need to see this.
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I raise my hand up above my head. I let it fall down. Connected to my body, my arm remains secure in its socket of the shoulder blade. My arm does not fall to the ground. My body is connected, “dem bones, dem bones, dem dancing bones.” My body has my back, secure “doin’ the skeleton dance ….The backbone's connected to the neck bone. Doin’ the skeleton dance.” And it was in this manner that I read Alice Topp’s new choreographic work, “Little Atlas.” There may have been three dancers on the stage, Leanne Stojmenov, Kevin Jackson, and Andrew Killian,...
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It takes “layers and layers of tulle together in a honeycomb construction that opens up when it closes”[note]Senior Gentleman’s Cutter, Marsia Bergh, in conversation with Kate Scott, “Making Wonderland,” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland programme, The Australian Ballet, State Theatre, Melbourne, 2017, 22[/note] to make a tail that befits a White Rabbit. It takes countless hours (of drafting, devising, twinkling, rehearsing, measuring, stitching, and repeating thrice) to create a world of nonsense in every sense and this is as it should be.
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I lie low. I nestle in the soil. Are you a fighter? A collaborator? A victim? A survivor? An idealist? A realist? Some days I feel like I am Bennelong. I am Bennelong.
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Group dynamics are the key focus in Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's explosive “Rain,” which responds to the classic "Music for 18 Musicians" (1974-6) by American avant-garde composer Steve Reich. It is of course not the first time she has worked with Reich's music, as her company Rosas have previously performed to "Drumming," another seminal Reich piece. It's a perfect fit, as she is a deeply lyrical choreographer, fully cognisant of the nuances and textures of Reich's oeuvre: the rhythmic shifts, throbs, hums and waves; the voices which pulse like heartbeats. She really puts her dancers through their paces—it's almost as...
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A stagehand dressed in black makes the most of their invisibility cloak to move props into position. The great horned owl makes the most of their night vision to seek out their prey with efficiency. Swoop, snatch, gobble, gone. A human night owl stays up late, night adapted, like their namesake, their form revealed only by the screen’s cold glare as they tap at the keyboard. Wrangling deadlines, devouring novels, gambling their savings, postponing the activities of the day—who knows? Such is the endless allure of nocturnal creatures.
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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