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REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Smells Like Teen Christmas Spirit

The New York City Ballet’s “Nutcracker” returned this season after its first year off since its inception in 1954. In the scope of bizarre Covid ramifications, the necessity of casting vaccinated children over the age of 12 in this year’s production must be high on the list. In normal years, the age range of the children in the performance is 8-12, with the occasional diminutive 13 year-old. For this strange year, the children were between the ages of 12 and 16. New costumes had to be made for the tall tweens and teens, and the roster went from 126 kids...

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

The Consumptive Beauty

A dark and passionate night two years in the making. Queensland Ballet’s “Dracula” finally premiered after it had, like many other productions, fallen victim to the inevitable pandemic rescheduling. It was, however, well worth the wait. Choreographed by Krzysztof Pastor—former Director of the Polish National Ballet and Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre—the ballet presents the gothic tale of forbidden passion in the most sumptuous manner possible.

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

About Time

Twyla Tharp is 80-years old this year, and even with an epic, half-century dance career behind her, the legendary choreographer is just as busy as ever. Throughout the pandemic, Tharp has been hard at work experimenting over zoom; recently, she stepped back into the studio to work with lead dancers from American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, as well as a group of young dancers she hand-picked, to create “Twyla NOW,” a program that matched two world premieres with two older pieces from the choreographer's vast repertoire in celebration of her birthday.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Care

It may seem strange for all of the supposed progress being made in understanding medical matters that there is still a societal stigma in how we lean into issues around mental health in 2021. Creating an effective discourse around it, in order to normalise it, is incredibly important. Art is a great platform for tackling big issues, such as depression and anxiety. Dance, then, can express with bodies something that can be hard to say out loud, for fear of othering, rejection, or being cast aside, either from friends, loved ones, or employers in a working environment.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

The Fiery Heart of Flamenco

It was a first for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but hopefully not the last: Under the artistic direction of flamenco artist and dancer extraordinaire, María Bermúdez, the Fiesta de la Bulería Jerez, one of the most prestigious events in all of Spain, came Stateside, its performers scorching the stage of Walt Disney Concert Hall. And throughout the nearly three-hour love-fest, the dozen artists collectively known as Sonidos Gitanos (Gypsy Sounds), raised the temperature from hot to blistering, the sold-out crowd continually jumping to its feet as if possessed.

REVIEWS | By Claudia Lawson

New Voices

For the first time since February, the Sydney Dance Company is performing live in Sydney with “New Breed 2021.” One year ago, I wrote the same sentence about the premiere of “New Breed 2020.” The performing arts had just endured what we thought would be their hardest year to date. But Covid-19 had other plans, and here we are again. This time we’re back, more weathered, masks firmly fitted, vaccination certificates at the ready. The crowd moves differently, everyone keeps just slightly more to themselves, eyes lower if shoulders accidentally brush on the way to seats. There is a sense...

REVIEWS | By Josephine Minhinnett

A Light Touch

What does dance and the car of the future have in common? In a warehouse of the former Toronto Star printing press, restyled as the Lighthouse Immersive Artspace at the city’s waterfront, the world premiere “Touch” from Côté Danse and Montreal multimedia artist Thomas Payette turns the technology of self-driving vehicles into a vehicle for an experiential multimedia dance installation.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Heavenly Dancing

It’s rare to encounter an artistic director’s program note offering more than generic greetings, yet I always read Peter Boal’s opening thoughts before pressing “play” on a Pacific Northwest Ballet program. (Happily the company has continued to offer a digital season alongside its return to the live stage.) To introduce this second mixed-rep bill, Boal could have angled for “relevance” and stressed how Ulysses Dove’s “Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven” connects to our moment of grief in the wake of the pandemic. But Boal is more personal and specific and less crudely calculating than that. He writes instead...

INTERVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Megan Fairchild, the No-nonsense Ballerina

If ever there was a can-do dancer, it’s Megan Fairchild. At New York City Ballet, where she has been a principal dancer since 2005, she performs all the toughest ballets, the ones that are full of jumps, quick footwork, and pin-prick pointework. At a point in her career when most principals forego certain punishing roles like Dewdrop in “The Nutcracker”—all those jumps! so much speed!—she has no plans to take things easy on herself. In fact, when I caught up with her to talk about her new book The Ballerina Mindset (Penguin Life, December 2021), Fairchild was in the middle...

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Dancing with Joy

Emerging from the global pandemic, which brought isolation, fear and, most tragically, death to so many, has indeed given us new reasons to enjoy simple things—the human connection, a hug, embracing hope again. And so it was with dancer/choreographer Danielle Agami’s world premiere, “Joy.” Performed by her Los Angeles-based Ate9 troupe at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (a special shout-out to the Wallis’ artistic director Paul Crewes, who departs his position at the end of the year but who has given local dance a position of prominence over his tenure), the work lived up to its name...

FEATURES | By Cecilia Whalen

Set and Reset

When first developing "Set and Reset" in 1983, Trisha Brown knew that she wanted the work to be a collaboration. Right away, Brown decided she wanted interdisciplinary artist Laurie Anderson to create a score, and being that both were also talented visual artists, Brown figured that they could actually complete the entirety of the work together, covering costumes and set design, as well. This is what she planned to tell her board when first announcing the idea; However, upon their initial meeting, before she could even explain her full plan, Brown's chairman spoke up: "Who is going to do the...

REVIEWS | By Valentina Bonelli

Red and Black

Entire generations have grown up reading Le Rouge et le Noir, finding in the 1830 novel by Stendhal a Bildungsroman and in Julian Sorel an alter ego for our own aspirations of career and love. For those who would like to find again that esprit de jeunesse, Pierre Lacotte’s “Le Rouge et le Noir” is a ballet not to be missed. Obviously, they have to be fond of those grands ballets in classic style that no choreographer stages anymore. Monsieur Lacotte is probably the last one, a specialist of that kind, who at 90 years of age was able to...

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.