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REVIEWS | By Karen Hildebrand

Dances By Very Young Choreographers

As I watched this evening of works made by 13 choreographers who grew up in the NYC-based after school dance program run by Ellen Robbins, I couldn’t help but think of a heated debate the dance community took up sometime in the aughts over the question, can choreography be taught? Peter Martins, then director of New York City Ballet, claimed it could not. Nearly everyone else disagreed. Surely this Dances By Very Young Choreographers alumni concert erases any lingering doubt. Robbins, now in her 41st year of teaching, produces a public show every year of the remarkable creations of her young makers,...

REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

The Basics

The big news before the start of New York City Ballet’s winter season was the announcement that the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky would be joining the company as artist in residence (in September) after the conclusion of his contract with American Ballet Theatre (in June). As many will remember, this was the first New York company Ratmansky choreographed for, before being swooped up by ABT. He has made some of his most innovative works here, including “Russian Seasons,” “Concerto DSCH,” and “Voices,” which returns to the repertory this week.

REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

In the Mood for Love

Penn Live Arts’ Dance Theatre of Harlem program this past weekend at Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center braided together an historical, social, racial, cultural, and artistic event. The relationship between the late Dance Theatre of Harlem’s founder, African American dancer Arthur Mitchell (d. 2018) and his mentor and benefactor, choreographer George Balanchine covers all those topics, with a Philadelphia dance community slant that was not lost on the audience.

REVIEWS | By Karen Greenspan

The Perpetual Motion of Longing

Elongated bodies meticulously keep time stepping on demi-pointe to the hard driving techno-beat. They crisscross the stage in various groupings from different directions with their prissy steps sporting opaque nylon knee socks, bare limbs, and nude colored leotards. The costumes by Rebecca Hytting amplify the picture of constricting uniformity; at the same time, they reveal the individual body shapes and builds of the seventeen highly trained dancers of tanzmainz. Trapped in a throbbing playlist and choreography of constrained energy, these bodies look like humans on a conveyor belt—intermittently exposing micro-signs of desperateness for escape. And occasionally some do escape—that’s when...

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Goodbye to All That

It is always interesting to see what a famous ballerina does when given the freedom to program her own show. On Saturday, Natalia Osipova, the Russian-born superstar (who has been a principal with the Royal Ballet since 2013), brought her much-hyped and sold-out extravaganza, “Natalia Osipova: Force of Nature,” to City Center for one night only. The ambitious, crowd-pleasing lineup—including the “Don Quixote” Act III Pas de Deux and “The Dying Swan” solo—was announced in a press release in early January and promoted in an interview with Pointe’s Kyra Laubacher less than a week before the performance. I don’t know...

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Off to the Races

The New York City Ballet opened its Winter Season with a wonderful all-Balanchine program, which I caught on the second night. Not only was the lineup of ballets interesting and well-balanced, there were excellent performances in leading roles throughout the show, by dancers in various stages of their careers—including the best principal casting I’ve ever seen in Balanchine’s tiny 1967 masterpiece, “Valse-Fantaisie.”

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Finding Grace

If an evening of dances from Ronald K. Brown/Evidence could be said to leave me wanting, it is surely only because the dynamic and spirited dancers in Brown’s rousing compositions leave me wanting more. On Tuesday evening at the Joyce Theater, this was the case once again. I would have happily stayed put in my seat late into the evening if the show could have gone on longer. The three works on the program charted a range of moods and explored the worldly with a divine nuance.

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Isolation and Injustice

Geometrically speaking, a line is a symbol of freedom: A figure formed between two points, the ends are limitless, extending to infinity. In Baye & Asa's “HotHouse,” lines are binding rather than liberating. The duo Sam “Asa” Pratt and Amadi “Baye” Washington are stuck in a large, rectangular plexiglass structure. They pace in linear patterns back and forth, unable to escape the confines of four finite walls.

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Collective Pursuits

House lights are still up as Tommie-Waheed Evans' "Bodies as Sites of Faith and Protest" begins. A group of dancers in all black step on stage, marching and clapping in time. Facing in toward each other, they are unified and mission-driven. Suddenly, a single dancer emerges from the group singing the folk song "We Shall Overcome." He walks carefully straight ahead, proclaiming the Civil Rights anthem to the audience. The lights dim.

REVIEWS | By Karen Hildebrand

Uneasy Moves

As “’lectric Eye” opens, a group of 14 bursts onstage, stepping in formation as runway fashion model swagger meets drill team precision. They criss cross the stage, arms swinging, hips gyrating, assorted gold and coppery mylar apparel flashing. It’s sexy, glitzy and mind-boggling in its intricate unison. As a group they step, turn, lunge, plié, kick, dip, relevé—constantly changing direction to a droning disco beat punctuated by the sound of drumsticks. Sound and movement are equal partners in choreographer Joanna Kotze’s work, and for “’lectric Eye,” musical collaborator, Ryan Seaton, emerges from the sound booth to perform a fully integrated...

REVIEWS | By Karen Hildebrand

Trees of Life

The stage is an orange box, with three simple long benches pushed against the walls. A dancer enters in silence, barefoot, dressed in a dark tunic with a collar that stands up at the neck and a bulbous skirt resembling petals of a flower. Other dancers arrive, men and women dressed alike. They take a seat, two to a bench. I imagine a Shaker gathering, austere and pensive. As the house lights go down and the music rises, the performers stand and take up a ritualistic stepping from side to side in unison. The flicking and scraping of bare feet...

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Web of Culture

“Call it culture.” This short phrase acted as the backbone of “Curriculum II,” a new work from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. Uttered as a satirical refrain or in bold type, floating in the numerous screens as a reprimand, this barb reappeared continually like so many tiny vertebrates supporting the structure of a complex and at times, unwieldy, composition.

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

Teenage Angst and Institutions

Watching 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,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

The Me of Today

The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

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.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

America, F**K Yeah

After 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.

REVIEWS | Emily May

Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup

An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.