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REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Reflections

In the second week of its fall season at Lincoln Center, American Ballet Theatre introduced a series of mixed bills that combine new and older works. The elder statesman here is Frederick Ashton. His ballet “The Dream,” from 1964, is a miraculous work that combines the most refined comedic timing—all musically-based—with amazing narrative clarity and gorgeous through-the-body movement that sends shivers through the spine. How did Ashton accomplish something so full in just one act? Aspiring choreographers should be forced to study “The Dream” in school, the way sculptors study statuary.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Alternate Worlds

At the Koch Theater, it is fairly easy to catch a ballet version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” set to Mendelssohn. Likewise, a silly, yet bravura, dance loosely scaffolded by The Four Seasons is regularly programmed there. But these statements are only true when the choreographers are George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, not Frederick Ashton and Alexei Ratmansky. During week two of American Ballet Theater’s Fall Season at the Koch, it was a little surreal, yet illuminating, to see variations on perennial New York City Ballet rep more regularly performed across the plaza at the Metropolitan Opera House. ...

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Work Out

There's a clip from “Twyla Moves,” the PBS American Masters episode about Twyla Tharp, of Tharp rehearsing with dancers in Central Park. It's from 1969: They were wearing regular street clothes, kicking and turning, throwing their bodies up and across, down and around as baby carriages, football players, and police on horseback meandered through them. Indifferent towards aesthetic perfection or public perception (not to mention whether or not their sneakers got stained), the dancers launched themselves through the park, falling and flying to the point of exhaustion.

REVIEWS | By Gracia Haby

A Living Future

The night begins with a homophone. With a playful swap of the knowing word ‘knew’ for a word that sounds the same when you speak or read it, but which now conjures up things shiny and in the present: ‘new.’ Johan Inger’s high-spirited, wistful memory, “I New Then” premiered in 2012, but it looks back further still, to what we now know was a ‘new’ time, one “that was both pure and simple but with the distinct challenges of becoming an adult.”[note]Johan Inger, “I New Then” choreographer’s statement, https://www.johaninger.com/#/i-new-then, accessed October 21, 2022.[/note] With an invitation to “walk and talk...

REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

The People's Movement

Fouad Boussouf’s “Näss” (the title means “people,” in Arabic) is a dance for seven men from his company Le Phare, set to an hour’s worth of intensely rhythmic, often trance-like music. The men are strong, and focused, at times vulnerable, at times aggressive, but never less than compelling. As their bodies submit to, and then begin to bend, the rhythm, they seem to take part in rituals, either private or shared. Eventually each man peels away from the group and erupts into a solo—if it were a play, these would be monologues. Each seems to express a different emotion: solitude,...

FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Team Spirit

When the Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to Lincoln Center November 1-13, iconic Taylor dances like “Esplanade” and “Company B” share the stage with world premieres from Amy Hall Garner and newly-appointed resident choreographer Lauren Lovette. Other highlights of the programming include a special evening celebrating the collaboration between Taylor and the painter Alex Katz, Kurt Jooss’s classic anti-war ballet “The Green Table,” and live music from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by maestro David LaMarche.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Look of Love

A breath of fresh, brilliant, joyous—and much needed—air blew into BroadStage on Thursday for the world premiere of Mark Morris’ “The Look of Love.” Co-commissioned by a national consortium of arts presenters, including BroadStage, the work is set to music from the vast cannon of multi-Grammy-award winning pop composer and songwriter, 94-year old Burt Bacharach, with lyrics by his frequent collaborator, Hal David, who died in 2012.

REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Ode to Joy

Alexei Ratmansky’s ballet “Whipped Cream,” which is wrapping up a week-long run at American Ballet Theatre, is the very opposite of a cautionary tale. A young boy gorges on whipped cream, only to be felled by a belly ache. He is dragged off to the hospital, where he is tormented by a bulbous-headed doctor and hypodermic-wielding nurses. But then, lo and behold, a princess conveyed on a snow-yak (that’s right) and three dancing liquor bottles come to the rescue. The doctor and nurses get drunk, and the boy magically travels to an enchanted place filled with dancing, happy people, where...

TALKING POINTES | Claudia Lawson

David Hallberg, One Year On

For our bonus episode this season, we’re catching up with the Australian Ballet’s Artistic Director David Hallberg. Last season, David and I spoke about his life growing up in South Dakota, being bullied, training at the Paris Opera, becoming principal at American Ballet Theatre, and being the first American to be invited to dance with the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia. We talked about climbing back from his epic injury, his head space at that time, before taking over the Artistic Directorship of the Australian Ballet right in the middle of Covid. A year later we talk about what it's been like to...

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Imaginative Reality

Crystal Pite’s “Flight Pattern,” created for the Royal Ballet in 2017, was noteworthy not just for its elegant storytelling but also its status as the first female-choreographed ballet to hit Covent Garden’s main stage this century. The half-hour ballet thrived on the power of the collective, marshalling three dozen dancers to tell an urgent chronicle about unity and strife, bodies breathing as one.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Art of War

The term, “theater of war,” as defined by the National Command Authorities, is the area of air, land and water that is, or may become, directly involved in the conduct of war. To Jacques Heim, founder, artistic director and choreographer of the 30-year old, Los Angeles-based troupe, Diavolo|Architecture™ in Motion, these words have taken on a literal meaning in the context of art: With veterans performing besides dancers in “S.O.S. – Signs of Strength,” which had its Los Angeles premiere in March and was seen as part of a double bill in Houston over the weekend, the work is searing,...

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

All That Jazz

LaTasha Barnes was dancing the Lindy Hop before she even knew it. In a 2021 interview with the New York Times, Barnes, who has come to international acclaim for her excellent performances in jazz and hiphop styles, said that the first time she tried Lindy partnering, her body already knew what to do. “I've felt this before,” she said, and, after consulting her grandmother, learned that she had actually been doing those moves since childhood.

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.