Stars of the International Ballet Stage
The IBStage Star Galas have a mission to unite the best and brightest for gala ballet evenings. As seen at New York City Center, New York. Photographs by Steven Pisano
Continue ReadingWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
The crowd of museum goers gathers around from multiple vantage points above and around the tiled, skylit courtyard of the Metropolitan Museum’s Robert Lehman Wing to view the dance performance. Perhaps they have just visited the exhibition Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter in the gallery above and are curious to continue digging into the story of this black artist, enslaved for over two decades in the studio of Spanish painter Diego Velázquez (1599–1660). Maybe they have just learned that seventeeth-century southern Spain had a large enslaved Muslim population forcibly brought from Africa and associated with many of the artists’ workshops and households. And people of color (enslaved and free) accounted for a large percentage of the population and were quite visible in real and rendered everyday life. Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670) eventually negotiated his freedom and went on to become an artistic force in his own right.
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The IBStage Star Galas have a mission to unite the best and brightest for gala ballet evenings. As seen at New York City Center, New York. Photographs by Steven Pisano
Continue ReadingWhile Kendrick Lamar performed “Humble,” during his Super Bowl halftime set and was surrounded by dancers clad in red, white and blue—and in the process assumed the formation of the American flag (choreographed by Charm La’Donna)—so, too, did Faye Driscoll use performers who created slews of shapes/sculptures in her astonishing work, “Weathering,” seen at REDCAT on February 8, the last of three sold-out performances.
Continue ReadingLet’s start with the obvious, or maybe to some this notion will be highly disputable, even offensive. OK, then, let’s start with what kept repeating in my head as I walked out of UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, synapses abuzz with the wonders of Twyla Tharp Dance’s 60th anniversary “Diamond Jubilee” program: My God, Twyla Tharp really is the most brilliantly inventive choreographer now alive on the planet.
Continue ReadingIn Maldonne, French filmmakers Leila KA and Josselin Carré pose eleven women side by side on a barren stage. They’re dressed in floral patterns that hearken to the 1950s. The camera zooms in to frame their faces—each woman is in a state of distress.
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