World-class review of ballet and dance.
Los Angeles, a town that loves the business of movies, television, pop music—and now art, with high-end galleries and museums flourishing—has a reputation for being notoriously inhospitable to homegrown concert dance. Presenters and venues are sorely lacking, and, indeed, the paper of record, the Los Angeles Times, rarely covers the local dance scene anymore.
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Music rarely takes a backseat to choreography for Richard Alston. The choreographer—a staple to Britain's modern dance scene and artistic director of Richard Alston Dance Company—is well known for crafting a symbiotic relationship between song and dance, his rep full of pieces in which these elements drink from and breathe life into one another in equal measure.
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The Mariinsky Ballet’s program, “Chopin: Dances for Piano,” which concluded the company’s season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, offered a sampler of three ballets, all set to Chopin’s piano music and created in different time periods: Michel Fokine’s “Chopiniana” (1908), Benjamin Millepied’s “Without” (2011) and Jerome Robbins’ “In the Night” (1970).
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A performance of “Swan Lake” by the Mariinsky Ballet is always an event in its own right. For 120 years this ballet has been a permanent fixture of the company’s repertory and a box-office magnet—the embodiment of the Mariinsky’s unique brand and style.
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Louise Lecavalier, erstwhile muse and star dancer of Édouard Lock’s Montréal-based troupe, La La La Human Steps from 1981 to 1999, rocks a hoodie and workout pants like nobody else. And while her expressive face and fastidious technique were the ideal vessel for Locke’s quicksilver choreographic vocabulary—her signature air pirouettes gasp-worthy—Lecavalier, now an astonishing 56 and mother to 12-year old twin girls and still a hoofing tsunami, has also thrown her chapeau into the choreography ring. (The Montreal native founded her own troupe,Fou Glorieux, in 2006.)
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Looking back, 2014 felt like a bumper year for dance, bringing with it a bevy of exceptional premieres and revivals alike. There were glittering fairy-tale ballets and gritty social dramas, cracking debuts and bittersweet final bows. As ever, there was grace in spades, but at the same time it seems the athleticism of the stage has never been greater, particularly on the ballet side of things, where precarious lifts are now king and 180-plus degree extensions the rule and not the exception.
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Before a new year is ushered in with fireworks and resolutions, there is just enough time to reflect on what has been, and prepare a list of dance highlights from 2014. The only trouble being, it quickly transpires, I am no good at list making. Some may rank higher, but all offered something; all enabled me to feel. My belief that you cannot see a work unfold without finding some gem to pocket was not tested this year, and so ‘if you look, you will find’ remains my unchallenged maxim.
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“The spaces we inhabit can frame our experience. How we see, and relate to each other and the world, inspire what we imagine, create, build and destroy. Hierarchies exist, however small, and we navigate them daily. And the body seems to tell all.” –Ros Warby[note]Ros Warby, “Tower Suites: Artistic Note,” Ros Warby website.[/note]
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In the yawning space of the machine hall, we assembled. A small group of mourners cloaked in suitable attire, our number countable upon my fingers, no need for the toes. We came in pairs to “Recovery,” to a space formally the domain of pigeons and vandals, to witness “a delicate duel with time.”[note]Nat Cursio and Shannon Bott, Artists' statement “About the work,” Nat Cursio website, 2014.[/note] I brought with me my curiosity and an expectation to become unmoored.
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When it was conceived in 2006, “Sacred Monsters” marked Sylvie Guillem's transition from the classical scene to the contemporary one—an intriguing development that had the famed ballerina's fans on the edge of their seats, eager to witness what turned out to be an inspired reformation. This revival, however, speaks to a less celebratory event: Guillem's impending departure from the stage altogether. (Her final performances have been announced for May 2015.) A full house showed up last week to watch the piece, which takes its title from an old French nickname for the biggest icons of the theatre and also features...
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P.O.V. Dance Project debuted “Wireless Connection” at Dancemakers in Toronto last Friday evening. The newly formed company appeared neat, sophisticated and upbeat, with a compelling hybrid style informed by styles ranging from ballet to hiphop. P.O.V. is directed by choreographers Amy Adams and Kylie Thompson, and have a pick-up company of a dozen versatile dancers. They have a light touch, and the dance was fresh, and the attitude contagious.
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The term ‘plateau effect’ describes the phenomenon of diminishing returns—that is, the reduced effectiveness over time of a once effective measure. Jefta van Dinther’s production by the same name does just that, putting forward a series of bold scenes, each of which ploughs ahead at a high-octane pace until the wow factor wears off and the audience adjusts to the sensory shock (think pulsing music, flashing lights, shuddering bodies). Van Dinther has a knack for detecting the very moment viewers have acclimatised, and it’s then that he throws another jolt into the mix, making for some powerful transitions. The one-act...
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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