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REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Beauty, Streamlined

George Balanchine had a special place in his heart for “The Sleeping Beauty.” It was a ballet that he always wanted to stage but never had the means—and the space—to do it properly; and he refused to do it on the budget. “He would put it on only if he could produce it on a scale comparable to “The Sleeping Beauty” whose enchantment he would never forget, the one he had appeared in as a boy in St. Petersburg, where the company had numbered some two hundred dancers and the stage had been grand enough for the most spectacular effects,”...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Space to Explore

In 2015, choreographers Akram Khan, Hofesh Shechter and Lloyd Newman drew ire from the UK dance community for criticising the quality of British contemporary dance training, claiming in a joint statement that UK-trained students “more often than not lack rigour, technique and performance skills.” The following week saw headlines abound, forums buzz with debate and Dance UK chairman Farooq Chaudhry step down from his post after chiming in to question whether UK dance schools are truly “serving their students.”

REVIEWS | By Jonelle Seitz

Belle Redux

“Belle Redux,” choreographed by Ballet Austin artistic director Stephen Mills and premiered by the company in 2015, is a dark reboot of the 18th-century French fairytale “La Belle et la Bête” (Beauty and the Beast). The two-act ballet was commissioned by the 3M corporation as part of a program to fund innovation in the arts (as part of his research, Mills met with 3M researchers and engineers), so it’s no surprise that it is unlike Mills’s other story ballets. Those ballets, including “Taming of the Shrew” (2004), “Hamlet” (2000), and “Cinderella” (1997), are updated and streamlined versions of the classics, but...

INTERVIEWS | By Merli V. Guerra

Just Dance

“I got an email from the director of the Pillow,” recounts Marsha Parrilla, cupping a mug of hot chocolate inside the warmth of a bustling Cambridge, MA, coffeehouse on a frigid February night. “She said I’m interested in talking to you about a potential opportunity, please reach out—and then I read it and I freaked out!” she laughs, her eyes beaming. “So I contacted her and she expressed interest in having us there for a residency.”

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

A Language for Life

Sambas, waterslides, live chickens on stage—nobody does dance theatre like Pina Bausch. The late choreographer’s Wuppertal-based company has just wrapped up a tour of “Masurca Fogo,” created during a three-week residency in Lisbon in 1998 as part of her World Cities series, a collection inspired by the cultures of various urban locales, from Rome to Budapest to Los Angeles.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Love, Lust and Death

Rambert are a formidable, ambitious company indeed. Who else could dance to soundtracks as diverse as Scanner, Arnold Schoenberg and South American pan pipes, all on the same bill?

INTERVIEWS | By Penelope Ford

Bella-rina

At a recent All Star Ballet Gala in Toronto, you could watch Isabella Boylston melt into a role, and then, distinctly, conquer it. The American Ballet Theatre principal, Bella to her friends, showed off her fleet footwork in the pas de deux from Bournonville's “Flower Festival in Genzano,” before literally diving into Balanchine's “Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux,” smiling all the while. The crowd roared its appreciation.

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...

FEATURES | By Rachel Stone

Again, A City Builds Itself

“I had not thought death had undone so many.”

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Pivotal: Jonah Bokaer

The last time New York-based dancer/choreographer/media artist Jonah Bokaer performed in Los Angeles, it was with Merce Cunningham Dance Company, more than 10 years ago. Indeed, the multi-hyphenate was 18 when he had the distinction of being the youngest dancer ever to join the iconic troupe in 2000, staying until 2007.

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...

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.