United
The inaugural Unite Ballet Festival, directed by Calvin Royal III, took place at the Joyce Theater from August 13-18, 2024.
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Mystic, vibrant, violent, feminist—Akram Khan’s newest work is all this and more. The hour-long piece stars Khan himself alongside Ching-Ying Chien and Christine Joy Ritter, and takes its inspiration from Karthika Naïr’s 2015 collection of poems Until the Lions, a reinterpretation of the Mahabharata, the ancient Sanskrit epic. This postmodern narrative layering—in which mythology is reframed through a modern literary lens and then channeled through a prism of contemporary dance, itself informed, in this case, by kathak tradition—lends a rich complexity to the work, one that’s felt in many aspects, from the stratified music to the mosaic sequencing.
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Akram Khan and Ching-Ying Chien in “Until the Lions.” Photograph by Jean Louis Fernandez
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The inaugural Unite Ballet Festival, directed by Calvin Royal III, took place at the Joyce Theater from August 13-18, 2024.
FREE ARTICLEBefore digital audio, compact discs, cassette tapes with their ribbons of sound sandwiched within a small case, and pressed vinyl records, came wax cylinders to record and reproduce sound, thanks to Thomas Edison’s 1877 invention of the hand-cranked phonograph.
Continue ReadingFar from Southern Spain, but in the heart of Hollywood, that once monthly dance staple, “Forever Flamenco,” was alive and well again at the Fountain Theatre, if only for the month of August.
Continue ReadingSince 1980, the Australian Ballet's National Tour (or really, the Dancers' Company as everyone calls it), is a much anticipated event for the graduating students of the Australian Ballet School.
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