World-class review of ballet and dance.
In today's episode we speak with superstar Dr. Brandi Cole. You may have seen Dr. Brandi on your screens as she worked to keep the Matilda's on the field during the Women's World Cup in 2023, and then at the Paris Olympics.
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The Martha Graham Dance Company performed two of its Greek myth-themed works at Philadelphia’s Suzanne Roberts Theatre over the weekend.
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Although Arlene Croce was not a trained dancer (her afterschool arts training in childhood was as a painter) she took dancing seriously as both an occasion for pleasure and a cultural endeavor, and she took writing about it to be a serious cultural action as well, at least as important to the mental health of the public as some of the verbiage by politicians and their editors.
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Talking Pointes, the podcast that shines a light on life in dance and the performing arts, is back for a fourth season.
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The Ragamala Dance Company returned to New York’s Joyce Theater with a visual feast for the eyes and stimulating food for thought with their new production “Children of Dharma.”
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For me, an undeniable highlight of Christmas 2024 was watching Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl with my family.
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My favorite books of 2024 offer dance history from the artist’s point of view. Perhaps there is nothing too unusual about this, and yet, something about this trend feels special as we step with trepidation into the first days of 2025.
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Lloyd Knight, Principal Dancer entering his 20th season with the Martha Graham Dance Company, debuts his first one-man show as part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim on January 13th.
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The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s annual December residency at City Center featured four world premieres. I caught two: Hope Boykin’s “Finding Free” and Lar Lubovitch’s “Many Angels.”
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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” so began Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities.
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Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) steps down the steps, rests her hat on the floor and takes in the Ozdust Ballroom in Wicked. She elevates her arm, bringing her bent wrist to her temple.
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The Sarasota Ballet does not do a “Nutcracker”—they leave that to their associate school. Instead, over the weekend, the company offered a triple bill of which just one ballet, Frederick Ashton’s winter-themed “Les Patineurs,” nodded at the season.
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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