World-class review of ballet and dance.
Few established artists hold recitals anymore. The word “recital” feels both elementary and antiquated, evoking either children parading across an auditorium stage or a nineteenth-century drawing room where the gentry whisper secrets around a pianoforte.
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It’s not often that one gets to hear a soprano recital in an up-close-and-personal setting. And it’s even rarer that said soprano has a pair of dancers moving about the stage as part of the performance.
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The ballet community in Los Angeles, quite large and scattered, is fond of opining that they live in a “tough town for ballet.”
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In a week of humanitarian crisis, of bodies mobilised and menaced, what a privilege it’s been to take refuge in art that radiates integrity, conviction and splendour.
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George Balanchine famously said, “ballet is woman.” But unusually, in “Kammermusik No. 2,” he featured an all-male corps de ballet. I can think of one other men-only Balanchine dance, and it happens to be running the same week this winter season: “Prodigal Son.”
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What makes a good partner? For the dancers of New York City Ballet who are lined up on the stage—KJ Takahashi, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Emma Von Enck, and Sara Mearns—the answer is different, though together, their responses create a pretty comprehensive prescription. A good partner should be collaborative, honest, present, and sensitive.
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San Francisco Ballet artistic director Tamara Rojo has often said she believes ballet should operate more like Broadway, where shows have previews and work through revisions before the real premiere.
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In general, one knows exactly what to expect of a Pam Tanowitz piece. There will be deconstructed ballet and modern steps.
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Two works, separated by a turn of the century. One, the final collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane; the other, made 25 years after Zane’s death.
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Last December, two works presented at Réplika Teatro in Madrid (Lucía Marote’s “La carne del mundo” and Clara Pampyn’s “La intérprete”) offered different but resonant meditations on embodiment, through memory and identity.
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In a world where Tchaikovsky meets Hans Christian Andersen, circus meets dance, ducks transform and hook-up with swans, and of course a different outcome emerges.
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Mao Zedong’s famous statement that women hold up half the sky may sound poetic and even liberating.
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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