Lifted Spirits
Even at his most straightforward, Paul Taylor often imbued his dances with a sardonic wit. Whether invoking darkness or light, he did so with a wink.
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The haute joaillerie house Van Cleef & Arpels has a long history of supporting dance, since Louis Arpels attended the Paris Opera Ballet in the 1920s. In the 1940s, the company began producing jewel-encrusted ballerina clips. When Claude Arpels met George Balanchine in 1961, it led to the New York City Ballet’s first abstract full-length ballet, “Jewels,” in 1967. Since 2012, the house has sponsored the L.A. Dance Project, and, in 2015, they began awarding the Fedora–Van Cleef & Arpels Prize for Ballet. Winners include Alexei Ratmansky, William Forsythe, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. So it was fitting that VC&A commissioned a new dance to be performed during its second annual Fifth Avenue Blooms festival, an outdoor celebration of spring running along NYC’s Fifth Ave from 50th-59th Street throughout the month of May. What was less fitting was the choice of downtown experimentalist choreographer Pam Tanowitz to headline this floral-festooned uptown stretch of consumerism—and the incongruity was a delight.
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Even at his most straightforward, Paul Taylor often imbued his dances with a sardonic wit. Whether invoking darkness or light, he did so with a wink.
Continue ReadingTalk about Gesamtkunstwerk! Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s “SCAT!...The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar,” is just that—a total work of art: operatic in scale, replete with stellar musicians and singers, and the glorious dancers of Urban Bush Women, the troupe that Zollar founded in 1984, is also storytelling at its best.
Continue ReadingOf all of Shakespeare’s plays, “Hamlet” might seem the hardest to adapt into dance. Its long soliloquies and a titular character stymied by indecision do not immediately scream movement potential.
Continue ReadingComplexions Contemporary Ballet turned 30 this year, and their two-week residency at the Joyce Theater was a party.
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