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Light and Shade
A bevy of black swans circled our car parked near to the lake’s edge. It was my first encounter with a black swan, nose to beak, separated only by a wind-up wind-down window pane. I would have been no taller than one of the swans, had I’ve been out of the car. I remember feeling awestruck by their scale, their very presence. And yet as I was four years of age, or thereabouts, is this a later addition stitched to a memory derived from family folklore? My mum recalled one of the swans hopped up on the car’s bonnet, but wonders...
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Two Premieres and a Reprise
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s latest bill, “[Un]leashed,” treats us to two premieres and a reprised 2012 ballet, all from female choreographers. It’s an attractive offering, somewhat unfocused but capably danced and dressed with some handsome moments.
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The Pit and the Podium
Masculinity is at the core of Gary Clarke's best work: from “Bagofti” which used masks to distort through Francis Bacon's violent triptychs, to the surreal, dreamlike “2 Men and A Michael” and “Horsemeat,” his is an iconoclastic approach to the representation of modern men. So it is with “Wasteland,” the follow-up to his award-winning “Coal.” “Wasteland” interrogates the effects of the closure of mines (in this instance, the Grimethorpe Colliery) on the local working-class male community, and the galvanising influence of rave culture on the younger lads. Using film footage, video work from Charles Webber and live vocals from local...
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Rhapsody
Boston Ballet closed its 2018-19 season with a touch of the new and a revival of the past with “Rhapsody,” a mixed program featuring seldom-seen works by Leonid Yakobson, alongside George Balanchine, and the world premiere of “ELA, Rhapsody in Blue” by Boston Ballet principal Paulo Arrais.
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Rigour and vigour
It’s elaborate partnerwork and committed performances at programme C of San Francisco Ballet’s big London tour, a two-week bonanza of 12 UK premieres spread over four different mixed bills. This one features Liam Scarlett’s 2014 ballet “Hummingbird” sandwiched between 2018 works from Stanton Welch and Justin Peck. All three pieces invoke abstract themes and contemporary choreography, though their respective tones and textures vary widely.
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Arty-farty Nutcracker
Reuniting two separated siblings, opera and ballet, was Benjamin Millepied and Stéphane Lissner’s mantra. And so they did. The premiere of the extravagant double bill “Iolanta/The Nutcracker,” staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov, was a major highlight of the Paris Opera Ballet's 2015-2016 season. There wasn’t much left of the original 1892 version, though. Tcherniakov was much praised for endowing the two scattered works with a newfound unity, his “Nutcracker” responding to “Iolanta” in some ways.
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Between the Lines
When asked to explain what her dance had meant, Isadora Duncan said: “if I could tell you what it meant, I wouldn’t have to dance it,” encapsulating the idea that dance, in its traditional sense, removes the need for words. The quote reminds us that the body is capable of expressing just as much as language; that physical expression, as Duncan pointed out, can capture the emotions, thoughts and images that exist around and beyond words.
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Thrill of Motion
Close to the front of the stage, dancer Kym Sojourna moves with calm intensity. Her actions are a study in form and control, each extension aiming to stretch her body as if beyond the reach of her limbs. It is the opening to Wayne McGregor’s “PreSentient,” first created for Rambert 17 years ago when the company was under the direction of Christopher Bruce. Now, in this first triple bill from the company’s new artistic director, Benoit Swan Pouffer, “PreSentient” makes a return to the Rambert repertoire—and it is there to make a statement.
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More New Combinations
New York City Ballet’s spring season featured a new work by Justin Peck as well as Pam Tanowitz’s company debut. Two other recent repertory additions—Matthew Neenan’s “The Exchange” and Gianna Reisen’s “Judah”—were also revived along with company staples and a few rarities. Of the new set I enjoyed Peck’s short, springy “Bright” the most. The stellar coupling of Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen in an airy heaven-scape was fleetingly dreamy. The ballet read as a brief glimpse through the clouds into Elysian fields, and was stunningly god-lit by Brandon Stirling Baker. Mark Dancigers’s score was anthemic yet flowery—with bells and chimes...
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Shostakovich Trilogy
There’s a devastating moment that arrives about two-thirds into “Symphony #9,” the first and most powerful panel in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Shostakovich Trilogy,” danced by Mathilde Froustey and Luke Ingham during one of the final performances in San Francisco Ballet’s spring season. The ensemble rushes in with their happy little flexed-foot peasant dances, their movements—penchée splits like ironing boards, hands touching the floor—becoming unabashedly vulgar. Amid the creepily murky lighting, Ingham lifts Froustey, and her feet beat in twittering exuberance as her head, neck and arms hang dead above. The image sears: rarely has art shown us more powerful testimony to...
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Lurking Within
Max Porter’s novel Lanny begins with Dead Papa Toothwort slipping “through one grim costume after another as he rustles and trickles and cusses his way between the trees.”[note]Max Porter’s Lanny (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 2019).[/note] He is the Green Man myth of decay and renewal, of chaos growing into hope; “he pauses as an exhaust pipe, then squirms into the shape of a rabbit snare, then a pissed-on nettle into pink-strangled lamb. He plucks a blackbird from the sky and cracks open the yellow beak. He peers into the ripped face as if it were a clear pond. He...
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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,...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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