World-class review of ballet and dance.
Frederick Ashton’s sun-soaked “La Fille mal gardée” isn’t the most obvious choice for a fall production, but its cheery pastels and verdant setting are, I can attest, an excellent antidote to the autumnal dusk starting to settle over London.
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Ballet Austin opened its season with a triple bill titled to announce the company’s upcoming monthlong, 150-city tour of China—its first performances in that country. Two works the company will tour, artistic director Stephen Mills’s “Wolftanzt” and “Liminal Glam,” sandwiched Lar Lubovitch’s “Dvořák Serenade.” Taken as a whole, the program was a study of ensemble: How does an ensemble hang together? In what ways is it threatened? Because Ballet Austin is an unranked company, such questions are especially intriguing.
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This performance of Alexander Whitley’s “Pattern Recognition,” which premiered at London’s Platform Theatre in April, was the kick-off to a five-leg autumn tour around the UK. The London-based choreographer has teamed up with digital designer Memo Akten to create a 50-minute contemporary work that uses motion-responsive technology to explore themes of consciousness, memory and fragmentation in the digital age. The technology comes in the form of eight chunky floor lamps that sense and track the dancers’ movements, responding with their own illuminated patterns. The lights, the programme makes clear, “are not pre-programmed but are driven only by the movement of...
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A fast ticking rhythm counteracts the slow, hyperextended movements of a solo dancer. Her back to the audience she moves with creeping extensions, her articulate body creating enticing distortions. Eventually a man enters and parades in circles around her, the statuesque stillness of his slow walks the antidote to her rippling, insect-like contortions.
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Living up to its post-postmodern moniker, Diavolo|Architecture in Motion™ not only rocked its 14-by-17 foot undulating boat in the troupe’s 1999 classic work, “Trajectoire,” but shook the rafters of the Broad Stage in four sold-out performances over the first weekend of autumn. Founded and directed by Paris-born Jacques Heim in 1992, the Los Angeles-based company kicked off its 25th anniversary season in fine style.
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The warmth of the spring day did not hold in the Substation. Inside the capacious, high-ceilinged, former industrial space, it is never warm. It is resolutely sub-temperature. Seated for the first of three solos presented under the collective awning of “Blowin’ Up,” I sat, cleared my throat, and cleared my throat again. The cold of the building crept inside my chest with the intention to make me the spluttering, wheezing, noisy audience member. My defence of stoicism and Soothers was going to be tested.
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Fragile, delicate things must be handled with great care. So it is with choreographer/dancer Marc Brew's “MayBe,” conceived and directed by Natália Mallo in collaboration with him. It is a thing of profound beauty.
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“Throwing his body up to a great height for a moment, he leans back, his legs extended, beats an entrechat-sept, and, slowly turning over onto his chest, arches his back and, lowering one leg, holds an arabesque in the air. Smoothly in this pure arabesque, he descends to the ground…. From the depths of the stage with a single leap, assemblé entrechat-dix, he flies towards the first wing.”[note]Bronislava Nijinska describing Vaslav Nijinsky’s Paris debut in Michel Fokine’s “Le Pavillon d’Armide,” from Bronislava Nijinska: Early Memoirs, trans. ed. Irina Nijinska and Jean Rawlinson (California: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), 270-271[/note] Vaslav Nijinsky...
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Few personalities in the ballet world question the essence of classical dance nowadays. Masterpieces such as “The Nutcracker” or “Swan Lake” are little more than gainful blockbusters in December programs. “The Sleeping Beauty” is no exception: its seemingly Manichean argument, happy-ending, fairies' parade and decorative choreography had plunged the ballet into formaldehyde for centuries. So, when a modern-minded choreographer took on an age-old fairytale ballet, one could think that the outcome had to be of the cerebral type, for a few jaded balletomanes to enjoy. Fortunately, Ratmansky’s revival is anything but a pedantic throwback to the days of yore. He doesn’t lecture...
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“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”[note]Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 119[/note] To me, this is what the creative process can feel like. Creativity is resilience and determination that comes to the fore when tested; when we “re-visit, re-spond and re-invent.”[note]Melanie Lane, Re-make artists statement, Next Move programme, Chunky Move, Melbourne, Victoria, September 2016[/note]...
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In a programme by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater you can almost guarantee a performance of formidable athleticism from a company of accomplished, rhythmical dancers. As the world famous company embark on a UK tour, their opening programme at Sadler's Wells, London, does not disappoint.
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In Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, protagonist Jake Barnes describes the work of a veteran bull fighter. “It was not brilliant bull-fighting,” he says of a match. “It was only perfect bull-fighting.” Once, this competitor wowed crowds in the ring with daring tricks and unparalleled passion. In this late stage of his career, though, these same movements seem slick and staged. He wins his matches—but he does not win over his audience.
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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