World-class review of ballet and dance.
Nat Cursio is a Melbourne-based dance maker, who creates choreographies, curated programs and developmental platforms under the umbrella Nat Cursio Co. Here, she illuminates her newest project, at least for a while anyway. 24 Frames Per Second opens at Carriageworks, Sydney on June 18.
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Dancehouse, Melbourne's longstanding centre for contemporary dance, will host dance maker and dance photographer Gregory Lorenzutti's inaugural Australian exhibition, “Dance is My Landscape” from June 12-14. More than one hundred of the Brazilian-born artist's images will occupy all three floors of the Carlton North dance institution, in a unique display dedicated to the art of capturing motion.
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“I love being in the studio, creating—it’s my happy place,” said Robert Binet, choreographic associate of the National Ballet of Canada. On the phone, he sounds exactly that—happy. In just a few years, the 23-year-old choreographer's career has blossomed. In September, his first piece for New York City Ballet will premiere at their annual fall gala, alongside new work by Justin Peck, Troy Schumacher and Myles Thatcher.
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In an astonishing display of courage, fortitude and wit, three dancers performed solos and with each other to a packed house in “Flower of the Season,” a series now in its 12th year presented by Body Weather Laboratory. B.W.L., a forum for investigating kinesthetic and movement research that was initiated by dancer/farmer and improvisateur, Min Tanaka, and is offered by exponents worldwide, is led in Venice by Oguri, the Japan-born performer who goes by one name only.
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With Los Angeles currently cited as the world’s hottest art market, many seem to forget that the city actually has a storied history, both in the visual arts as well as in presenting cutting edge performances. The year was 1983 and “Available Light,” a collaboration between Bay Area composer John Adams, Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, and then New York-based choreographer Lucinda Childs, was one of the first projects to inaugurate what was known as the Temporary Contemporary.
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The third—and final—instalment of the New York City Ballet’s “Balanchine Black & White” festival offered three abstract ballets: “Square Dance,” “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” and “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” in a program dedicated to Balanchine’s famed minimalist aesthetics. If the costumes of the dancers were simple and stage décor was absent, the stylistic and dramatic variety of the choreography was rich, vibrant and powerful.
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Guillaume Côté's new ballet, “Being and Nothingness” made its premiere alongside two-thirds of Alexei Ratmansky's “Shostakovich Trilogy.” Two quite different pieces to put together and yet the bill was a success. Côté's existential mood allowed the dancers to explore darker shades in vingettes, while Ratmansky's “Shostakovich Trilogy” kept a steady flow of movement.
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The second program of the New York City Ballet’s “Balanchine Black & White” festival was dedicated exclusively to Balanchine-Stravinsky ballets, honoring the most extraordinary creative partnership in twentieth century arts. Balanchine was Stravinsky’s most devoted advocate and promoter; like no other choreographer he respected, understood and adhered to the composer’s musical philosophy and values. “Balanchine employed his choreography as a conduit through which the message of Stravinsky’s music could be clarified and strengthened,” wrote Charles M. Joseph in his book Stravinsky’s Ballets, describing this unique artistic alliance.
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Bubbles at the ballet! And what a fantastic way to end a program, which is precisely what Los Angeles Ballet did by presenting Jiří Kylián’s deliriously witty, “Sechs Tänze,” a 1986 bauble set to Mozart that should be required viewing for those who think ballet is a mysterious and elite art form.
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Rambert's newest bill promises a lot of excitement: it kicks off with the London debut of Alexander Whitley's 2015 work “Frames,” then moves on to a revival of Lucinda Childs' simple but celebrated “Four Elements,” commissioned in 1990. The headline act is a world premiere from artistic director Mark Baldwin that features 20 dancers swishing to the on-stage syncopations of a 32-piece brass band, the musicians' gleaming instruments shielded from the action by perspex armoury and art deco-inspired scaffolding.
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“Balanchine Black & White,” a three-program celebration of the great ballet master’s most exalted and extreme aesthetics, offered a unique opportunity for ballet-goers to appreciate and experience anew the breadth, depth and extraordinary invention of Balanchine’s trademark style of neoclassical ballet. The festival, which opened New York City Ballet’s spring season, featured twelve abstract one-act ballets, stark and minimalist, entirely liberated from any kind of stage décor, theatrical pantomime or elaborate attire, with the dancers wearing stylized practice costumes predominantly in black and white. In each of these ballets only music and movement create a nucleus of the action, expressing...
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When the American is in Paris he undergoes an education. Sure he arrives in ill-fitting clothes, pronouncing "coin" as if it were currency, but when he leaves he is a Man of the World. So we will forgive Jerry Mulligan, the ex-G.I. played by Robert Fairchild in “An American in Paris” at the Palace Theater, for appearing a little shallow. He's in the works. And underneath those clipped lines and long silences there is probably a fine mind; he is just more reserved, that’s all, and it serves the French—who tend to sound much smarter than they are—right.
Continue ReadingWatching 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,...
Continue ReadingThe 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.
Continue ReadingAfter 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.
Continue ReadingAn “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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