World-class review of ballet and dance.
I am in a dance studio I have danced in for nearly 12 years. I am watching Errol White and Davina Givan show an excerpt from their upcoming work, “Worn.” The studio lights are up. Errol and Davina are wearing their practice clothes, recognisable from the classes they teach. A married couple, they perform an intense duet born from a close embrace that morphs into weaving, fiercely connected patterns.
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“Isadora was all about becoming yourself as you dance, really putting yourself into it. She never restricted herself, quite the opposite. I wish I'd met her!”
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On a recent fall afternoon, the choreographer Karole Armitage was rehearsing her troupe at the Mana Contemporary cultural center in Jersey City, where she is an artist in residence. One wall of the studio is made of glass, so that everyone strolling through the galleries or stopping for a bite at the café can pause to watch Armitage and her dancers at work. It seems utterly natural for her art to be on display alongside John Chamberlain’s scrap-metal sculptures and Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light installations—even though her medium has a pulse.
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Jefta van Dinther, Swedish-German choreographer and dancer, has been making dances with and for contemporary luminaries (Mette Ingvartsen, Frédéric Gies, Kristine Slettevold, Keren Levi, Ivana Muller, LeineRoebana, and Xavier le Roy) for the past decade. Central to his work “is the question of what it means to be human,” and his choreography draws on themes of time, memory, alliance, and isolation. He is one of three choreographers to have been appointed to make dances exclusively for Cullberg, alongside Deborah Hay and Alma Söderberg, for the next two years. Veronica Posth met with Van Dinther in Graefekiez, Berlin, to discuss his...
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Much to his amazement, Mark Morris, once hailed by the New York Times as “the most successful and influential choreographer alive, and indisputably the most musical,” has a global hit on his hands with “Pepperland.” A groundbreaking dance tribute to the 50th anniversary of The Beatles iconic album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, the evening-length work, which was commissioned by the City of Liverpool in 2017 and has toured to rapturous audiences ever since, arrives at Segerstrom Center for the Arts June 14 for three performances.
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There’s praise and then there’s praise! Indeed, it’s safe to say that the celebrated New York-based choreographer, Pam Tanowitz, is having a moment now. Not only did the New York Times’ Alastair Macaulay recently cite her “Four Quartets,” as one of the top 10 works of 2018, but in reviewing it last July, he declared it to be, “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century.”
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Nonchalance, inventive choreography and genre-bending collaboration are the hallmarks of New York-based tapper Caleb Teicher’s work. Teicher first made waves as a founding member of Michelle Dorrance’s innovative tap dance company, Dorrance Dance. Lauded by the New York Times for his “switchblade feet,” in 2011 Teicher took home a Bessie Award for outstanding individual performance. In 2015, Teicher founded his own troupe, Caleb Teicher & Company. CT & Co blends tap, vernacular jazz, Lindy Hop, and other American dance styles to reflect “a collective conscience within modern American culture.”
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This Friday and Saturday, Boston Dance Theater (BDT) makes its home city debut, with performances at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Mass., presented by World Music/CRASHarts. Although Boston-based, the new company has local and international connections, with co-direction by Boston dancer and director Jessie Jeanne Stinnett, and Itzik Galili, award-winning Dutch-Israeli choreographer.
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In the realm of dance and social change, Sankofa Danzafro is making its powerful choreographic voice well-heard, one continent at a time. The Afro-Colombian company, founded by Rafael Palacios in 1997 on the Pacific coast of Colombia, brings its internationally acclaimed 2010 production “The City of Others” to the Celebrity Series of Boston, to be performed in New England Conservatory’s (NEC) newly completed Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre on November 3 & 4. Performed by a cast of 20 dancers, “City” addresses social issues of wealth disparity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and racism in Colombia in an impactful mix of dance, music and...
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Perched on the back of a chair holding a microphone, right leg extended long, the artist and songwriter Mitski Miyawaki (known mononymously as Mitski) languishes on a barely illuminated stage like a cabaret chanteuse. There’s a tension in her pose; her arms appear relaxed, but every muscle is held. This photograph from her latest tour, which she posted on her Instagram, illustrates a different sort of physicality for the artist—previous show photographs tend to capture her at a standing mic, holding her guitar.
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For a month in summer, across the country from the beating heart of dance in America, New York, the coastal town of Santa Barbara becomes the backdrop for a unique dance residency, known as DANCEworks. Over the last decade, the invitation-only residency hosted by the Lobero Theatre has been instrumental in the forging the artistic careers of some of the country's foremost contemporary choreographers, including Aszure Barton, Kate Weare, Larry Keigwin and more.
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As the sun set on a humid Central Park the first evening of August, Kyle Abraham, the artistic director of A.I.M (a modern, genre-bending dance company formerly known as Abraham.In.Motion), spoke with Gibney’s new curatorial director Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In the few hours before A.I.M’s performance at the Summer Stage, they talked about Abraham’s performance style and influences, his advice to those who started dancing late in life, and his apprehension surrounding a piece he is currently choreographing for New York City Ballet.
Continue ReadingWatching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...
Continue ReadingThe choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
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Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.
Continue ReadingAfter a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.
Continue ReadingAn “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
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