All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 56

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New [digital] Ghosts

What was live, I can pause, and it occurs to me that not being able to conveniently pause a live performance was one of the things I most enjoyed about it. It was live. It is live. It was/is roaring along, independent of my will. And in having no control over any part of its trajectory, I disappeared completely, in the best possible sense. I wasn’t me in the theatre or hall, but a series of notes, a flurry of limbs, a lightness, an extension, particles illuminated by stage lighting; anything. In this freedom, a different kind of pause. A...

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Summer Shorts

In the beginning of August, Marquee TV—a performing arts streaming platform—unveiled its inaugural “Summer Short Film Festival,” a curated selection of 28 short films of dance and music from around the world. The festival is a result of the partnership of Marquee TV with the San Francisco Dance Film Festival and Scotland’s Screen.dance festival. All the entries of “Summer Shorts” are offered for free viewing until the end of the month.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Kaatsbaan Dance Oasis

Real live dancing! In other times those three words might connote a neon sign outside a strip club. But in the time of Covid-19 you can simply take them at face value. And in this case, they refer to the highbrow shows of the Kaatsbaan Summer Festival, where a rotating cast of stars from the NY dance scene are performing on weekends all summer long. Stella Abrera, whose retirement performance as a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater was canceled due to the pandemic just months ago, is already flourishing in her second career as artistic director of the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, NY. In fact, she and executive director Sonja Kostich have managed to pull off quite a feat, holding the only live dance performances pretty much anywhere in the United States this summer. I lucked out: for the last five months...

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Róisín O'Brien

Festival Lights

Edinburgh is quiet. In August, the city normally swells with people jostling to get into theatres, pubs, shipping crates, beer gardens, and tents. The festivals are a key part of Edinburgh’s identity, and while there are often murmurs within the industry that a break from, or a scale back of the festivals wouldn’t do the city any harm, nobody wanted a break this way.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Memories and Illusions

The details of the tragic demise of the Romanov family, the last Imperial dynasty of Russia—and what really happened on the fateful night on July 17, 1918, in a secluded mansion, in Ekaterinburg, a town in the Ural Mountains—presented a great mystery that puzzled historians and researches for decades. The ultimate destiny of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra Fedorovna, was particularly clouded by enigma, speculation and intrigue. For years, there were several pretenders, riotously claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, who (as was believed by many) managed to survive the bloody...

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Bright Lights and Bach

It begins in a place I know well. In the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria. Benedicte Bemet, who was promoted to coryphée in 2013, to soloist in 2016, to senior artist in 2018, and to principal artist in 2019 with The Australian Ballet, is seated at the far end of the hall. Beneath the prismatic revelation of Leonard French’s Great Hall ceiling (1963–67), Bemet is alone.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

On the Front Line

With only a few words—“Lately, it has been considerably harder to rise,” Jacques Heim, founder and artistic director of the risk-intensive, hyper-physical dance troupe, Diavolo|Architecture in Motion, has managed to capture how so many of us are feeling during the unprecedented crisis perpetrated by Covid-19. These words, written by performer France Nguyen-Vincent frame Diavolo’s first foray into film, This Is Me: Letters from the Front Lines, which was commissioned by the Soraya and is available to view for free on that organization’s Facebook page.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Braveheart

In the vast repertory of the Bolshoi Ballet, “Spartacus” holds a unique place. A thrilling mix of energy, athleticism and drama, this ballet is widely regarded as the famed Russian company’s most iconic work —the quintessential Bolshoi. Prominent dance critic Clive Barnes called it “the most successful Soviet ballet since ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Dancing, Lakeside

Straddling Northern California and Nevada at 6200 feet, Lake Tahoe is a natural wonder but hardly an artistic hotbed. Christin Hanna grew up as a culturally isolated “bunhead” there, on the north rim of the lake. She trained in Reno, and at American Ballet Theatre’s summer program, and made the leap to New York in her twenties, taking class at STEPS on Broadway with Willie Burmann and eventually dancing with the New Chamber Ballet at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The Pillow was revelatory to this dancer with a keen sense of history and a deep respect for the importance...

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

A.I.M/BLM

“Let us remember, we’re fighting two viruses,” the choreographer Kyle Abraham writes on the A.I.M (Abraham in Motion) website. In what is a perfect response to both, the Joyce Theater is streaming a performance of his piece “Meditation: A Silent Prayer” online through August 24th. Though this work premiered in 2018, it seems tailor-made for the Black Lives Matter reckoning of today. Of course, the racism and bloodshed “Meditation” addresses have been around for centuries, but the piece is frighteningly apropos to the current pressure cooker moment. Running just ten minutes, “Meditation” is an ideal length for our digitally-dependent quarantine....

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Open Doors and Detours

The finest choreographers have not only a signature style, but walk their own creative paths—think Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Crystal Pite, Michael Clark, Botis Seva and Sharon Eyal. All are idiosyncratic visionaries with their own stylistic quirks and traits. All have raised eyebrows, and raised the roof with their work, which may not be rooted in the comfort of traditions and familiarity, but rather, leave indelible marks on the viewer. If you can make an audience member squirm, laugh, feel puzzled, or even aroused—sometimes, all at once—job done! The best artists create worlds within worlds. So it is with genius...

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Lightfoot's Love Letter

Nederlands Dans Theater’s brand new work “Standby” is a dance of irresistible energy, galvanizing athleticism and touching poignancy; it’s also an ingenious and masterly realized work of art created in the time of pandemic. Choreographed in just three weeks and captured exclusively on film to be streamed on the company’s website and NDT’s YouTube channel, “Standby” is described by its creator, Paul Lightfoot, as a ballet inspired by the limitations and possibilities of social distancing. “Can we connect without touch?” With this brilliant dance, the choreographer answered this question affirmatively.

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.