World-class review of ballet and dance.
The Dance Theater of Harlem returned to City Center this week for the first time under the leadership of Robert Garland, a former company dancer, school director, and resident choreographer. This was the launch of an exciting new beginning, though the troupe was simultaneously celebrating its past.
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Despite the fact that dance and music are often regarded as inextricably linked, it remains astonishing to experience the work of a choreographer who channels the score particularly well—or a group of dancers who embody it especially organically. Repertory Dance Theatre’s 58th season closer, “Gamut,” happened to have both.
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If there’s anybody who embodies ‘rizz’—charisma in today’s coolspeak—it’s dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Benjamin Millepied.
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One might easily mistake the prevailing mood as light-hearted, heading into intermission after two premieres by Brenda Way and Kimi Okada for ODC/Dance’s annual Dance Downtown season. Maybe this is just what we need to counter world events, you may think. But there is much more to consider beneath the high production values of this beautifully wrought program. Okada, for instance, folds a dark message into her cartoon inspired “Inkwell.” And KT Nelson’s “Dead Reckoning” from 2015 reminds us the outlook for climate change looms ever large.
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Dance scholars have been remarking on the great Trisha Brown nearly from the day she first stepped into Robert Dunn’s class—the genesis of Judson Dance Theater—in the 1960s.
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The prolific drummer Max Roach would have been 100 years old on January 10, and all around the world, admirers have been celebrating.
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Generally, a production of “Swan Lake” is only as good as its Odette and Odile, symbolic of the duality of nature. So, it’s wonderful to see Sophie Martin back, dancing one of her signature roles. She's predictably brilliant.
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The Nederlands Dans Theater has been coming to City Center since 1968. The company’s associations with edgy choreographers like Jiri Kylian, Crystal Pite, William Forsythe, and Ohad Naharin have made for some thrilling performances over the years.
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There may not be a direct correlation between bibliophiles and lovers of Butoh— the Japanese modern dance form created as a response to the bombing of Hiroshima that is sometimes referred to as the Dance of Darkness—but it’s safe to say that there never has been—nor will there ever be—a bookworm, literally, quite like Oguri.
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Reading up on the backstory of how Alejandro Cerrudo’s “One Thousand Pieces” finally made it to the stage at Pacific Northwest Ballet, one is struck by the epic commitment the company lavished upon an epically scaled dance.
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Created by Scottish Dance Theatre’s artistic director Joan Cleville, and filmed in one long, continuous take by digital artist Tao-Anas Le Thanh, “The Life and Times” is inspired by amongst other Baroque works, the Diego Velazquez’s painting, Las Meninas, which invites the viewer to observe the painter in his studio, flanked by a group of sumptuously attired models.
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Doug Varone is known for the masterful way he moves groups of people around onstage, yet he may have outdone himself in his latest work, “To My Arms/Restore.”
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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