Stars of the International Ballet Stage
The IBStage Star Galas have a mission to unite the best and brightest for gala ballet evenings. As seen at New York City Center, New York. Photographs by Steven Pisano
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For thirteen years, from 2011 until this summer of 2023, Virginia Johnson was Dance Theatre of Harlem’s artistic director. She began her tenure before there was even a company to direct. In 2004 the ensemble that she joined in 1969, the year Arthur Mitchell formed the company, had been forced to go on hiatus because of serious financial problems. The question of whether it would get back on its feet was a real and agonizing one. And then in 2010, Mitchell, her mentor, asked her to lead the effort to bring it back. It was not a project she had sought out, or that she craved. But it was impossible not to accept the challenge. The company, which Mitchell had created in response to Martin Luther King’s assassination, was too important not to save.
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The IBStage Star Galas have a mission to unite the best and brightest for gala ballet evenings. As seen at New York City Center, New York. Photographs by Steven Pisano
Continue ReadingWhile Kendrick Lamar performed “Humble,” during his Super Bowl halftime set and was surrounded by dancers clad in red, white and blue—and in the process assumed the formation of the American flag (choreographed by Charm La’Donna)—so, too, did Faye Driscoll use performers who created slews of shapes/sculptures in her astonishing work, “Weathering,” seen at REDCAT on February 8, the last of three sold-out performances.
Continue ReadingLet’s start with the obvious, or maybe to some this notion will be highly disputable, even offensive. OK, then, let’s start with what kept repeating in my head as I walked out of UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, synapses abuzz with the wonders of Twyla Tharp Dance’s 60th anniversary “Diamond Jubilee” program: My God, Twyla Tharp really is the most brilliantly inventive choreographer now alive on the planet.
Continue ReadingIn Maldonne, French filmmakers Leila KA and Josselin Carré pose eleven women side by side on a barren stage. They’re dressed in floral patterns that hearken to the 1950s. The camera zooms in to frame their faces—each woman is in a state of distress.
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