Heralding the Bright Days Ahead
London is a changed city this week. The cold front has come, and daylight hours have plummeted. The city is rammed with tourists, buskers, and shoppers.
Continue Reading
Latest
No Words, No Refrains
The Royal Ballet’s new restaging of “Everywhere We Go”—the Sufjan Stevens-scored ballet that secured Justin Peck his appointment as resident choreographer at New York City Ballet in 2014—challenges the company’s dancers to adopt a specifically American brand of pizzazz.
Continue Reading
Our Generation
Quadrophenia is about young men . . . and I do weep for young men still, because we are still struggling,” Pete Townshend—80 years old—playfully told Stephen Colbert while promoting the latest incarnation of the Who’s 1973 rock opera and 1979 film: “Quadrophenia: A Rock Ballet,” which ran last weekend at City Center.
Continue Reading
Dreamscape
The surge protectors needed replacement after the Hofesh Shechter Company’s concluded four nights performing “Theatre of Dreams” at the Powerhouse: International festival in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Continue Reading
Monkey Business
In the 1996 comedy Multiplicity, Michael Keaton plays a man who decides to clone himself several times over in order to meet the demands of work and family. Chaos ensues. On November 14, San Francisco Opera premiered “The Monkey King” by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang. While the narrative features chaos, the line drawn between the 30-year-old film and this new opera is that the titular Monkey King is played by three performers; or one singer, one dancer, and a puppet; or, six performers total, because the puppet Monkey King requires three puppeteers. The Monkey King is an agent...
Continue Reading
Martha Graham in Paris
If classical ballet training—from Vaganova to Cecchetti—idealises effortlessness, silence, and a body almost freed from its own weight, modern dance insists on the opposite: the blunt truth that we are made of flesh and bone, and that this matter can itself become an instrument of power.
Continue Reading
Moon Dance
Tides and the gravitational pull of the moon informed the latest work of Denison University of Ohio dance faculty members Marion Ramirez and Ojeya Cruz Banks.
Continue Reading
Mother of Creation
What drives the creative force in the universe? What impels motherhood? These are some of the questions that provoked the bold and colorful work that unfolded onstage as Gallim premiered “Mother” at the Joyce the first week of November.
Continue Reading
Dancing Out of Time
It’s a law of the universe, immutable as gravity: if you’re a ballerina, in December you’re dancing “The Nutcracker.”
Continue Reading
Birds of a Feather
Bird-themed dances are nothing new. In addition to the likes of “Swan Lake” (in its numerous iterations, Hello, Matthew Bourne!), “The Firebird” and “The Dying Swan,” there was also Merce Cunningham’s 1991 “Beach Birds.”
Continue Reading
Wild Child
Juliana F. May’s “Optimistic Voices,” which premiered last week at BAM Fisher, was pitched as an exploration of the “tangled contradictions of family, eroticism, and motherhood.”
Continue Reading
Pulling Back the Curtain
In the summer of 2007, writer Stephen Manes, known for his best-selling Bill Gates biography, over thirty books for young adults and children, and for his work as a technology columnist, proposed a new endeavor. He wished to spend an entire season at Pacific Northwest Ballet to observe like a fly on the wall and capture in written word a world of which most people will never catch a glimpse.
Continue ReadingFeatured Reads
Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
Continue Reading
Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
Continue Reading
The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
Continue Reading
Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
Continue Reading
School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
Continue Reading