World-class review of ballet and dance.
Batsheva Dance Company, under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin, who led the troupe from 1990 until 2019 (he’s currently House Choreographer), has been an incubator for dancemaking talent. While the names Danielle Agami, Sharon Eyal, and Hofesh Shechter may come to mind, add to that list Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, who met while members of Batsheva, where they fell in love and subsequently married in 2018.
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The 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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For novelists Eliza Knight, Barbara Quick, and Cathy Marie Buchanan, historical fiction became a window into these subtleties, allowing them to use both research and imagination to depict some of the dance world’s most iconic figures.
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Ilter Ibrahimof is the cofounder and artistic director of Toronto’s Fall for Dance North festival. Held annually since 2014, FFDN is a Canadian offshoot of the beloved New York City Center series.
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For thirteen years, from 2011 until this summer of 2023, Virginia Johnson was Dance Theatre of Harlem’s artistic director.
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When Mark Morris Dance Group comes to the Joyce Theater August 1-12, the two-week engagement will be one for the dance history books.
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A few years ago, I had the pleasure of catching a perfectly shaped, humorous dance vignette of two dancers with two chairs, set to the first movement of Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor.
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From the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago and Ballet Hispánico, to the Royal Ballet of Flanders and Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa has covered the terpsichorean waterfront.
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“That was beautiful, but I didn’t get it,” was a refrain Brett Ishida got used to hearing in the audience at dance performances.
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Talk about a radical retelling of a classic story! In Benjamin Millepied’s “Romeo & Juliet Suite,” performed by members of LA Dance Project, the troupe he founded in 2012, there are three casts playing the title roles: a traditional heterosexual couple, two men, and two women. And, as if that weren’t a major departure from your standard issue “R & J,” this evening-length rendering has much of the action captured through projections from a Steadicam while the cast navigates myriad areas of the theater.
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Kenneth MacMillan created the short expressionist ballet “Sea of Troubles” in the late 1980s. The work draws on Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, and its central theme is Hamlet’s mental state following the suspected murder of his father, the King. As in many of MacMillan’s creations, an exploration of darker aspects of the human psyche underpins the ballet, whose nine scenes chart Hamlet’s journey as he becomes consumed with the desire for revenge and questions about guilt, morality, death, and what is true and false.
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As a choreographer and dancer who conceives and directs experimental performance, Dominican-born, Florida-raised Ligia Lewis is not shy about expressing her opinions, whether in an interview, on stage, or in real life. Indeed, with her most recent work, “A Plot/A Scandal,” which has its U.S. premiere in Los Angeles at the Geffen Contemporary at Museum of Contemporary Art, May 5-6, Lewis once again pulls no punches as she weaves together historical, anecdotal, political, and mythical narratives as only she can.
Continue ReadingTwo performers crawl in on hands and knees wearing neon green, hooded coveralls—the lightweight papery kind made for working in a sterile environment—and clusters of balloons pinned to their backs.
Continue ReadingWill Rawls makes boundaries visible by defying them. Known for the disciplinary and topical range of his projects, the choreographer, director, and performer approaches issues of representation in “[siccer],” a multi-part, multi-site work co-presented by L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival. A live performance at Performance Space New York...
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It is always interesting when multiple theme steps emerge over the course of a mixed repertory evening, but it is uncanny on one featuring five different ballets, each with a different choreographer and composer, covering a twenty-year span (2005-2025).
Continue ReadingZvidance premiered its new work “Dandelion” mid-November at New York Live Arts. Founded by Zvi Gotheiner in 1989, Zvidance has been a steady presence in the New York contemporary dance scene, a reliable source of compositional integrity, and a magnet for wonderful dancers.
Continue ReadingCleveland native Dianne McIntrye received a hometown hero's welcome during her curtain speech prior to her eponymous dance group thrilling the audience in her latest work, “In the Same Tongue.”
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