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REVIEWS | By Karen Greenspan

Dohee Lee Reimagines a Korean Ritual to Heal

“I was born on this island of conflict, where beauty and trauma collide,” sings Dohee Lee referring to her native Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea. With sung narrative, she invites the presence of her Korean ancestors and the ancestral land itself for her world premiere of “Chilseong Saenamgut (Duringut): Ritual for Sickness.” Wearing a white cotton robe layered with strips of white paper and a white turban, she rings the shaman’s bell and opens her arms welcoming the audience members at Gibney Center in New York City (February 23-25) to heal along with her in a potent...

REVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

Reflections on Room of Mirrors

Ballet has long been imbued with a mysterious air. It’s a closed-off world, one that—despite many hopefuls—admits only a select few. Audiences are led to believe that what goes on behind its closed doors is a kind of magic. And when the curtain closes, the beauty they’ve experienced remains.

REVIEWS | By Lea Marshall

Fiery Delight

Richmond Ballet’s pairing of George Balanchine’s “Serenade” and Ma Cong’s one-act “Firebird” encapsulates the beauty and quintessential oddness of ballet. The drama and simplicity of “Serenade’s” opening startled the audience into eager applause. The Richmond Ballet dancers built a community before our eyes and graciously welcomed us in. As the dance shifted through its four sections with many entrances and exits and varying numbers, I felt sad to see the corps go and a little thrill when they returned. This is not to dismiss the performance of accomplished soloists, guest artist Kristina Kadashevych in particular dancing with assurance the combination...

BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

What Ballet Leaves Behind

In her latest book, Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet author Alice Robb calls New York City Ballet co-founder George Balanchine her “problematic fave.” Especially as the dance world continues to examine many of the darker aspects of the famed choreographer’s influence on ballet culture, this is a sentiment that many of us—myself included—seem to be echoing.

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Goddess Energy

Some choreographers integrate visuals, text and moods seemingly effortlessly. Colette Sadler is one such artist, as she has long created singular work which straddles performance art, visual art and dance. So it is with her gorgeous and meditative riposte to Daphne's punishment from Apollo, “Oracle Leaves.” In the original myth, while attempting to escape Apollo's brutal advances, Daphne is transformed into a tree. This piece pushes back, embracing an alternative vision, with a rebellious spirit at its core. It is a long, langorous stretch of limbs, a slow-burning beauty. Once you become attuned to its sparse setting, slow pace and...

TALKING POINTES | Claudia Lawson

Signing and Dancing with Emma Memma

Welcome back to Talking Pointes. This season we're back with another 10 beautiful conversations with some of the world's most extraordinary dancers, choreographers, and artistic directors. I'm your host Claudia Lawson. For our summer season bonus episode, we're catching up with the divine Emma Watkins. In season one, Emma and I spoke about her life growing up in Sydney. We spoke about her early dance years, about injuries and auditions, and then being selected to be the first ever female Wiggle. We spoke about Emma's passion for Auslan, her PhD, and we also spoke about love, surviving endometriosis, and fertility....

REVIEWS | By April Deocariza

An Adventurous Delight

It seems like not too long ago that audiences ventured with Clara through the Land of the Sweets and now Cincinnati Ballet takes us yet on another journey, this time with Alice and her adventures in Wonderland. Septime Webre’s take on the iconic tale by Lewis Carroll is a feast for the senses both young and old can enjoy—vibrant sets and costumes, humor, an inspiring score by Matthew Pierce, and just enough touches of the classic story without being a total regurgitation (familiar characters like the Mad Hatter, King and Queen of Hearts, and White Rabbit all make their appearances). What’s more,...

REVIEWS | By Phoebe Roberts

Secret Things

What makes a choreographer great? This has been the question plaguing the dance world for the last thirty or so years. Is it their feeling for music, the originality of their combinations, the world they create?

INTERVIEWS | By Rachael Moloney

Tiler Peck, Creative Spirit

New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck is many things beyond ballerina. Although it’s a role she excels in—she is widely acclaimed for her immaculate technique, speed, and musicality —Peck has always sought more from her career in dance. Schooled from an early age in various genres, including jazz, she made her Broadway debut at age 11, appearing as Gracie Shinn in “The Music Man.” Other musical theatre roles followed, but after seeing a performance of “The Nutcracker” in New York, Peck set her heart on pursuing her ballet training. She entered the School of American Ballet when she...

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

A Lover's Heart

Do we watch the classics with a scholar’s brain or a lover’s heart? Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Giselle” engages both, but a viewing of the company’s digital season stream leaves me feeling that the heart still has to triumph.

BOOKSHELF | By Phoebe Roberts

Dancing the Difference

“Dancing was about learning to disassociate,” the narrator of Lola Lafon’s 2022 novel Reeling informs us early on. “Feet like daggers, wrists like ribbons. Power and languor. Smiling despite persistent pain, smiling despite nausea.” This declaration, only five or so pages in, strikes as piercingly as the daggers Lafon imagines for feet. What in this compulsion towards violence, I wondered, is so imperative when telling a story about dance? Scarcely a narrative arises that is not characterized by gruesome extremes. Black Swan, with its body horror, comes to mind, as does Gelsey Kirkland’s 1986 memoir Dancing on My Grave, infamous...

FEATURES | REVIEWS | By Karen Greenspan

The Slowest Wave

A groundbreaking collaboration is afoot involving New York City butoh dance company Vangeline Theater; founded by French-born butoh performer, choreographer, author, and teacher Vangeline; and a neuroscience team from the University of Houston, Rockefeller University, and City University of New York. The collaborating parties are researching the impact of butoh on brainwave activity in a pilot study. I am in Houston, Texas, at the university’s theater watching the culminating butoh performance as a group of neuroscientists (visibly stationed in the wings) record and download the activity in the dancers’ brains. Simultaneously, a multi-media artist is “artistically” projecting the dancers’ real-time brain activity onto...

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.