Portraits of a Lady
Martha Graham is the Georgia O’Keefe of dance. No matter what the source material, the primary subject of her works is womanhood.
Continue ReadingWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
“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 makes during a game of charades—for dance and performance. Through Soundpainting with a bank of Bowie songs, text from his interviews, and movement sequences within a predetermined arc, the show facilitated an engagingly disorienting dive into the most outwardly colorful period of Bowie’s life and work: the 1970s.
Performance
Place
Words
“Uncommonly intelligent, substantial coverage.”
Your weekly source for world-class dance reviews, interviews, articles, and more.
Already a paid subscriber? Login
Martha Graham is the Georgia O’Keefe of dance. No matter what the source material, the primary subject of her works is womanhood.
Continue ReadingPetite in stature, with beautiful, delicate features, Scottish dance artist Suzi Cunningham is nonetheless a powerhouse performer: an endless shape shifter whose work ranges from eerie to strange, to poignant, or just absolutely hilarious.
Continue ReadingWith his peerless vocabulary of postmodern abstract moves—or, as he’s called it, “gumbo style,” which blends Black dance with classical ballet techniques—Kyle Abraham, a 2013 MacArthur Genius grant awardee, has been making thought-provoking works for decades.
Continue ReadingCan art save civilization? The question matters deeply to Brenda Way, who has dedicated her life to the arts in San Francisco.
Continue Reading
comments