All – Tagged "REVIEWS" – Page 93

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REVIEWS | By Jade Larine

Sense and Sensibility

Many balletomanes (rightly) worship “Onegin” but few of them have read the eponymous novel by Pushkin, a founding father of modern literature in Russia. Yet, the book and ballet are closely intertwined, both in text and steps. Prey to mal du siècle, Onegin is said to cast “a mournful gaze” on the “dreary stage” at a ballet performance. He yawns and leaves. In hindsight, isn’t it ironic, given that Cranko’s masterpiece has the opposite effect on the audience? The ballet arouses passions, whether positive or negative. Some dismiss it as an offence to the inner realm of Pushkin and Tchaikovsky—Balanchine...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Song & Dance

Heartbreakingly beautiful, sublime and an utter triumph, John Neumeier’s production of “Orpheus and Eurydice,” a collaboration between the Joffrey Ballet and Los Angeles Opera, is the epitome of high art. Having debuted in Chicago last September and co-produced by L.A. Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Staatsoper Hamburg, the work that premiered in 1762 Vienna and was composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, makes use of the 1774 Paris version (“Orphee et Eurydice”), with a libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline.

REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

Stormy Weather

If ballet were an Olympic sport, BalletX’s Andrea Yorita would be taking home the gold for her performances in the company’s spring series at the Wilma last weekend. She dazzled in Matthew Neenan’s “Increasing” and Trey McIntyre’s “The Boogeyman.”

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Treat 'Em Mean...

What a beguiling double bill ... Esteemed American company Ballet Hispánico bring the heat to a particularly biting and misty Edinburgh. It's passionate, inventive work to immerse yourself in, evoking long, hot summer nights. We can but dream.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Stone

Divergence

There’s a moment at the end of Balanchine’s “Divertimento from Le baiser de la fée” in which the two principal dancers embrace center stage, the heroine of the ballet grasping her hero’s waist, leaning on a bent leg on pointe, arched over completely backwards. “It’s as if she contains two different forces at the same time,” New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay writes:

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

A Welcome Redress

In the ballet world, female choreographers remain, unfortunately and infuriatingly, the exception rather than the norm. Ballet British Columbia artistic director Emily Molnar shines a spotlight on this imbalance with a new bill of ballets from Crystal Pite, Sharon Eyal and herself—a welcome redress to a centuries-old deficit, made even more so by its cool absence of progressive intent. The programme champions women not by specifying feminist themes but by simply making space for female dancemakers to present their choreography—a resounding statement in itself.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Cutting Loose

At the Kier Choreographic Award semi-finals my shoes cut loose. At the Kier Choreographic Award semi-finals, independent of me, that is, my shoes cut loose. Lobbed by an enthusiastic audience member, relishing their liberty, my left shoe, it flew across the dance floor, airborne and free. It landed with a thud. The right shoe, it was a log that tripped another audience member mid-dance, before it transformed from obstacle into a fish flipping on land. My shoes, free of me, had the night of their lives, I expect. And when it came time to collect my shoes from the stage,...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Tableaux Vivants

“Körper” is a study of the human body, a deep-dive into its physical form as well as the outside forces that shape our grasp on anatomy, sexuality and mortality. Sasha Waltz, one of Germany’s foremost dance theatre choreographers, created the work in 2000 as the first in a trilogy, and it’s since toured some 50-odd cities, dividing audiences around the world with its unyielding pitch and arduous manoeuvring.

REVIEWS | By Jade Larine

Too Big to Fail

Marie-Agnès Gillot is one of a kind, one in a million. She has arms and legs for days, which she sinuously moves like tentacles, spectacular extensions which she uses as air-piercing arrows and a stage charisma that could hypnotize you from the highest gallery seat. A Guillem-like dancer of intense virtuosity, she had world-class potential. But she’s never completely made the most of it and her final “Boléro” translates just that. Her 20-minute solo indeed read like a resigned swan song: yet, a beautiful one.

REVIEWS | By Oksana Khadarina

Divertimento

The David H. Koch Theater looked particularly festive during New York City Ballet’s winter season. Nearly 200,000 balloons of different sizes and colors, assembled in elaborate garlands and constellations—a pop art installation by the Turkish-American visual artist Jihan Zencirli (a.k.a. Geronimo)—transformed the theater’s atrium into something akin of a gigantic playground.

REVIEWS | By Rebecca Ritzel

Star-crossed Lovers

It seems the only way to see Shakespeare set in the Elizabethan era these days is to go to the ballet. Especially in Washington, D.C.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Inspired Steps

I don’t think I can avoid beginning this review on a personal note. I found Episcopalian Grace Cathedral at age 25, because I lived two blocks down Nob Hill and couldn’t figure out what else to do on Easter morning, never guessing I would convert and still worship at Grace 18 years later. KT Nelson, cofounder and one of two main choreographers at ODC/Dance, San Francisco’s most prominent contemporary company, found Grace via a more circuitous route. Hearing Joby Talbot’s choral score “Path of Miracles,” which dramatizes a pilgrimage along Spain’s famous Camino de Santiago, led Nelson to a five-week...

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.