World-class review of ballet and dance.
There’s a lot going on in Yvonne Rainer’s “Hellzapoppin’ What about the bees?” performed by eight dance artists and actress Kathleen Chalfant as special guest. A founding member of Judson Dance Theater, writer, and experimental filmmaker, Rainer’s wit and breadth spans several mediums in her newest work. At 87, with two Guggenheims and the MacArthur Fellowship under her belt, Rainer claims this show is her finale.
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“Mayerling,” Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s 1978 ballet about Austria’s Crown Prince Rudolf, is steeped in death. The show is bookended by funeral scenes and centres on a grisly murder-suicide. MacMillan himself actually died backstage during a performance in 1992. And now, 30 years later, a revival meant to mark that national loss unfolds amid another one. Opening night was the Royal Ballet’s first performance since Queen Elizabeth II’s passing.
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It happens that three of the programs I was most interested in seeing this season fell in the same week. One (Oct. 5) consisted of a medley of pieces to the music of Stravinsky; another (Oct. 6) combined the 1959 work “Episodes,” set to four works by Anton von Webern with the sumptuous “Vienna Waltzes,” from 1977; and the last (Oct. 7) included two of the company’s major “hits” of the last decade-and-a-half, Alexei Ratmansky’s “Concerto DSCH” and Justin Peck’s “Everywhere We Go.”
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The spectacle is the existing orders' discourse about itself, it's laudatory monologue. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
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Darrah Carr Dance entered the stage like sunlight pouring gently into a sleeping room: a wave of bodies stepping onto an empty stage softly but swiftly conquering the space with exuberance. Seán Curran and Darrah Carr's "Céilí," which premiered in the new state of the art Irish Arts Center in Hell's Kitchen, refers to the Irish word for a house party. The set (by Mark Randall) is an outline of a house, with golden-brown roof beams hanging from above, a window positioned stage right, and wooden benches lining both sides of the stage. A collaboration between the two Irish American...
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Queensland Ballet staged Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon”—a rarity in and of itself. It is not every day that a MacMillan piece graces an Australian stage, and when it does you know that it was by no means an easy feat to get it there. Expectations were set high for this premiere; “Manon” was pitched as the diamond of the company’s season and promised to fully immerse the audience in the absolute wealth and passion of the tale. A promise, it seems, that Queensland Ballet was fully justified to make.
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Since Eleonora Abbagnato has been Ballet director at Opera in Rome, glamour as well has entered the theatre. A popular figure in Italy for her features on TV, married to an ex-football player, with her beauty and elegance the former Paris Opera étoile has found a way to attract a new audience to ballet thanks to collaborations with a top fashion brand: Dior. Always a muse for Italian fashion designers, Abbagnato has found in Maria Grazia Chiuri her ideal designer as they share a similar history as Italian women, who both worked very hard to reach their goals, remaining rooted...
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It’s late September: the air is crisp, the kids are back at school, and the Fall for Dance festival is ensconced at City Center for two weeks of grab-bag programming at bargain-bin prices. I chose to attend Program 3 of this year’s fest because it featured the live premiere of Jamar Roberts’s “Morani/Mungu (Black Warrior/Black God),” which premiered virtually during the Covid-adapted FFDF of 2020. Arriving 5 months after George Floyd’s death and overtly tackling the struggle to simply exist as a Black person in America, I found this solo incredibly moving at the time. I’ve wanted to see it...
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New York has always been a hub for dance from all over the world, but the last few years, because of the pandemic, have created a sense of isolation. We began to forget how exciting visits by far-off companies can be, how they quicken the senses and renew our admiration for a particular artist, or introduce us to something completely new.
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The term “wayfinder” has two definitions. The first refers to a sign or landmark that helps navigate people to a specific location; a physical marker guiding people home. The second points toward a traveller; someone who is in search of a particular place. Despite being either subject or object, the two definitions share a commonality—there is an inherent and active search going on. People searching for signs, for each other, and for meaning. The audience, too, walked into this performance searching for their own answers, as individual as they may be. And what they found was the kaleidoscopic brilliance that...
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In their brand new facility in Sydney’s Walsh Bay, Bangarra Dance Theatre have once again produced an awe-inspiring work, but this time, it might also be their sweetest; their first offering for children: “Waru—Journey of the Small Turtle.”
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The New York City Ballet opened its Fall Season with a bill of three Balanchine ballets which premiered in a relative cluster: “Divertimento No. 15” (1956), “Scotch Symphony” (1952) and “La Sonnambula” (1960). The first and last of these were reworkings. “Divert” was an update of “Caracole,” a ballet made in 1952 to the same Mozart score, which Balanchine and the dancers had simply forgotten when they tried to revive it four years later. “La Sonnambula,” titled “Night Shadow” until 1961, was originally created for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1946. When taking the first drafts into consideration,...
Continue ReadingLong 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.
Continue ReadingIt 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.
Continue ReadingAs 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.
Continue ReadingOne 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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