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REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

Taking Sides

“Ping.” “Tink.” “Chick-o-wee.” In the late afternoon, Quarries Park, Clifton Hill, is a wonderful chorus of bird calls and a whirl of neighbourhood activity. The sun doesn’t set for another two hours yet. The golden light where everything appears rimmed by a halo or to glow softly is approaching. In anticipation, the high-pitched trills and the soft churring “kreeeark” of birds. And at the foot of the park, a knot of people gathers for Rudi van der Merwe’s “Trophy,” presented by Dancehouse as part of swiss.style, a focus on dance from Switzerland for the first ten days of November. In...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Sixties Swing

The Royal Ballet’s first mixed bill of the 2019/20 season is a snapshot of 1960s British ballet and the polar places it went. Sandwiched between a spare modern creation and a frothy classical revival are bouncy character variations set to a turn-of-the-century orchestral work—slightly mismatched courses, sure, but an interesting snapshot of the company’s mid-century catalogue, plus a chance to see the Royal’s robust solo talent in action.

REVIEWS | By Claudia Lawson

A Step in Time

Sydney Dance Company’s second program marking their 50th anniversary year is “Bonachela/Obarzanek.” This double bill celebrates the company’s history as laid out by its dancers and choreographers, and also the cultural contribution SDC has made to the contemporary dance scene in Australia and around the world.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

New Ventures

Birmingham Royal Ballet is on a creative commissioning spree. Set on widening its audience at home and away, the company has been funnelling resources into a range of choreographic initiatives and collaborations, and its shows are looking sharper for it.

OTHER | By Penelope Ford

Behind the Lens

Many will know Ethan Watts as a dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, but few may know he is a keen photographer. Watts joined us on the set of our upcoming video for Fjord Review #2 at the invitation of Karolina Kuras, to capture the action and ambience of the shoot. Watts photographs exclusively with film. His pictures show not only a trained dancer's eye, but a clear instinct for catching the moment.

OTHER | By Penelope Ford

Fjord Review #2

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our second printed edition Fjord Review #2! Contributed to by our brilliant cohort of writers, FR #2 is 160 pages of pure dance, in a totable, perfect-bound book, printed sustainably by carbon-offset certified printers Hemlock. We've stepped it up for FR#2 and will be releasing an incredible video in conjunction with this edition.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Hypervigilant

There is an itchy sense of restlessness to Emanuel Gat's ephemeral piece with Scottish Dance Theatre, a heightened kind of hypervigilance with a dozen dancers onstage always looking over their shoulders. They appear primed to pounce at any time, all too aware of lurking predators. It's there in Gat's lighting design, which is hugely evocative of twilight corners. It's woven into the alertness of eyes, the scratchy shapes of arachnid hands twitching in the air and protective hunches on haunches, the groups of two or three, rearing up like horses on hind legs. This “fight or flight” stance is a...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Day

“I remember the day.” So begins Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s crowdsourced lament, a eulogy for the lost, an encomium for those still with us, a sorrowful remembrance of a bygone world, one forever changed when some 3,000 lives perished on that horrific Tuesday in September. Making use of a single day as metaphor to cut to the heart of humanity, the 2016 Lang composition, “the day,” was commissioned by contemporary cellist Maya Beiser as a prequel to Lang’s 2003 opus, “world to come,” which was composed in response to 9/11, with “The Day” receiving its West Coast premiere over...

INTERVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Breaking Barriers: Karole Armitage

On a recent fall afternoon, the choreographer Karole Armitage was rehearsing her troupe at the Mana Contemporary cultural center in Jersey City, where she is an artist in residence. One wall of the studio is made of glass, so that everyone strolling through the galleries or stopping for a bite at the café can pause to watch Armitage and her dancers at work. It seems utterly natural for her art to be on display alongside John Chamberlain’s scrap-metal sculptures and Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light installations—even though her medium has a pulse.

INTERVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Jefta van Dinther

Jefta van Dinther, Swedish-German choreographer and dancer, has been making dances with and for contemporary luminaries (Mette Ingvartsen, Frédéric Gies, Kristine Slettevold, Keren Levi, Ivana Muller, LeineRoebana, and Xavier le Roy) for the past decade. Central to his work “is the question of what it means to be human,” and his choreography draws on themes of time, memory, alliance, and isolation. He is one of three choreographers to have been appointed to make dances exclusively for Cullberg, alongside Deborah Hay and Alma Söderberg, for the next two years. Veronica Posth met with Van Dinther in Graefekiez, Berlin, to discuss his...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Into the Fold

There’s a mythic quality to Angelin Preljocaj’s “La Fresque,” both in theme and aesthetic. The 2016 production, recently shown in the UK for the first time, is inspired by a medieval Chinese saga about Chu (Marius Delcourt), a man who delves into a mural and marries its subject before being booted back to reality. There are pounding drums and starry skies, hair coiled to evoke ancient deities. We see pilgrims scaling mountains, seraphim swinging from the heavens, Spartans squaring off for battle. The folkloric angle is right up Preljocaj’s alley: other works with his Aix-en-Provence-based company include “Snow White” and...

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Elements

There is an ineffable poignancy, a sense of subtle melancholy even, to this immersive and moving piece, “Bodies of Water” created by Saffy Setohy, Aya Kobayashi, Nicolette Macleod and Joanna Young for family audiences. It is dancers Setohy and Young who perform, and invite the audience into a quiet, dark but cosy space for interaction and dance. Tables are festooned with little clay pots created across Scottish communities over the course of a year. As pairs, we too are invited (with eyes closed) to create little makeshift pots of clay, something to contain water.

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.