Beauty and anger co-exist in a restless evening of hard-driving dance and thrashing rock music in Susan Marshall’s “Play/Pause.”
“The Inkomati (dis)cord”—a world-travelling collaboration between dance-theatre artists Boyze Cekwana of Soweto and Panaibra Canda of Maputo, Mozambique—ends on a bright, sardonic note, with a multilingual game of “Telephone.”
Dance, architecture and Hollywood came together in a big way when L.A. Dance Project began its residency (performances are also slated for the fall), at the new Ace Hotel.
Every era has its balletic superstars. From the early 18th century rivals, Marie Sallé and Marie Camargo, through the Romantic period’s Marie Taglioni (the world’s first “La Sylphide”), who was so adored that a male fan allegedly ate her slipper, ballet has mostly been about feminine mystique, beauty and allure.
Ballet and jazz can make for some interesting, if occasionally odd bedfellows. Throw in some cookware and neo-Pina Bausch gestures, and a program could turn raucous, joyful and, well, neither balletic nor jazzy.
And then Nat Cursio closes the front door. The sound changes. I feel now the elephant in the room. I am in someone’s home, invited, but alien.
