To Excavate and Elevate
This season opener from English National Ballet gathers four markedly different works to showcase the gamut of the company’s evolving repertoire.
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Song of Resistance
It will be impossible to walk past the Panthéon again without recalling what happened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in late September 2025: the extraordinary transformation—verging on possession—of Germaine Acogny into Joséphine Baker.
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An Ideal Don Quixote
The curtain opens on a stark, grey stage. Cut off from the vitality of the world, an aged man, shabby and nondescript, exists only for his books. Inspired suddenly by a romantic vision, he forces a lazing servant to attend him and leaves behind this colorless prison, carrying his fantastical determination along with the dated accoutrements of a crusading knight.
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His A.I.M is True
For its twentieth anniversary, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham showcased a trio of established works set to live music at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center.
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Sparkling Shiraz
Semantic satiation is the psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener.
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Moving Memory
I make my way up the stairs at the Substation. Along all four sides of the large room, rows of seats are arranged. Event warning: sudden loud noises. Content warning: death. I find a seat along the long side wall, with my back to the window.
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Points of View
From the back of the stage, a single searchlight points in the direction of the audience, and as it does, it sweeps across the forms of seven dancers in Stephanie Lake’s “Seven Days.”
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Stardust
“Are we cancelled now?” James Jordan queries mischievously, eyes shining. He’s just made some chancy quips regarding recent Strictly Come Dancing controversies, alluding rather than directly addressing the issues. “We were the good boys on all of our series,” he insists.
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Into the Wilde
At a time when the arts in America are under attack and many small dance companies are quietly disappearing, San Francisco’s dance scene—for decades second in its volume of activity only to New York—still has a pulse.
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Just the Steps
Noé Soulier enters the space without warning, and it takes a few seconds for the chattering audience to register the man now standing before them, dressed simply in a grey t-shirt and black pants, barefoot.
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Getting in the Groove
In the first few seconds that the lights come up on BalletX at the Joyce Theater, an audience member murmurs her assent: “I love it already.”
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Order and Disorder
The right foil can sharpen the distinct shapes of a choreographic work, making it appear more completely itself through the comparison of another.
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Firebird Rising
Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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Rare Birds
It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
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The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.
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Jack of Hearts
As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.
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School Report
One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.
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