No Gray Areas
Programming, like staging and choreography, is an art, and Ángel Corella surpassed himself with all three in this early spring show featuring all new works.
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We enter off the commercial retail strip of Broadway into a whimsical garden of cardboard cut-outs painted in shades of neon pink, orange, and green by the artist Mimi Gross. The gleaming wood floor of the fully functional dance studio is now bordered with flowering hedges, mirrored wall draped in leafy boughs, the glass itself painted as an enchanted forest. It all seems to quiver under the glow-in-the-dark lighting design of Lauren Parrish. As if a salve for a troubled and contentious world, Douglas Dunn has turned his SoHo loft into a lush “Garden Party,” filled with poetry and music devoted to love. His take on the matter is delivered with a wit so droll, we’re not sure whether the sentiment is genuine or parody. Perhaps at 80, Dunn has the perspective necessary to give us a little of both. With a history rooted in the 1970s spontaneous experiments of Grand Union along with the precision and control of Cunningham technique, his artistic breadth is considerable.
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Douglas Dunn (center), Alexandra Berger, Janet Charleston in “Garden Party.” Photograph by Jacob Burckhardt
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Programming, like staging and choreography, is an art, and Ángel Corella surpassed himself with all three in this early spring show featuring all new works.
Continue ReadingIn some ways, dance could be considered an extreme sport: it meets many of the same criteria, featuring (at times) high speeds, significant risk, and the potential for severe injury. French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane seeks to reinforce this parallel in his new work “Outsider,” which received its UK premiere at Sadler’s Wells on March 26th as part of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Continue ReadingHave they started or are they just practicing?” asks a gentleman sitting in the row behind me. It’s a fair question: students from Rambert School of Ballet nonchalantly execute their own sequences of repeated movements as the audience filters in, taking their seats on all four sides of the vast performance space.
Continue ReadingIn a career spanning almost 30 years, American dancer-choreographer Trajal Harrell has created a body of work borne of a rich imagination and an enquiring mind.
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