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REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

How It Started, How It’s Going

In the archives at Jacob’s Pillow a 1948 video of Talley Beatty performing “Mourner’s Bench,” plays on a loop. In the space of a couple minutes, Beatty moves fluidly through wave-like motions, contracting and extending his body with a coiled intensity searching for release. The black and white footage is silent and flickering, and it is difficult to make out the expression on his face. Watching it over and over, I am struck by how Beatty continues to rise up with a Phoenix-like quality, eventually lifting up so much he executes a precarious one leg balance and promenade on top...

REVIEWS | By Karen Greenspan

Down to Earth

The Vertigo Dance Company from Israel performed "One. One & One"─a work of incisive sensitivity and raw physicality at PS 21 (Performance Spaces for the 21st Century). Just a 3-hour drive north of New York City, the expansive conservancy with its singular, open-air pavilion theater is arguably the most perfect space to experience Vertigo’s earthy masterpiece. The 300-seat, open-air, state-of-the-art theater sits at the apex of a 100-acre preserve of apple orchards, meadows, and woodlands with trails. As the drama of sunset over New York’s verdant Hudson Valley played out in full view, the spectacle of Vertigo’s nine amazing dancers...

FEATURES | By Valentina Bonelli

From Verona to Venice

In very hot Italian summer, travelling between Verona and Venice could reveal the tastes and manias of “the beautiful country” in the field of dance. In Verona, stormed by tourists this year more than ever, dance has a great tradition, as this writer remembers looking back at her childhood. At the Arena di Verona, you could admire the best of the then international dance scene, such as Maurice Béjart’s Ballet du XXème Siècle or classic ballets with stars like Rudolf Nureyev and Carla Fracci, Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova, while at Teatro Romano more contemporary programs introduced companies such as...

FEATURES | REVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Bright Colours

The international dance festival Colours in Stuttgart is a fairly young endeavour. Commencing in 2015, it repeated every two years through 2019 and restarted this year with a grand program. Launched by Eric Gauthier together with Claudia Bauer and Meinrad Huber, the festival has received international acclaim since its conception. As often dance festivals do, it brings together dance professionals, amateurs and enthusiasts in a friendly environment where it’s possible to relish in a vibrant and colourful atmosphere.

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

Veiled Anonymity

Once a year, Queensland Ballet stages “Bespoke,” the company’s main contemporary program. It presents three new works created by three different choreographers that experiment with the creative process. “Bespoke” holds a unique place in Queensland Ballet’s season. It acts as a platform that exposes audiences to a wider variety of works (ones that are not just classical). More importantly, however, it also allows us to witness the wide spectrum of abilities the company dancers have to offer—abilities that are, sometimes, overlooked when staging more traditional productions.

REVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Dancing under the Stars

For performing arts aficionados, summer in Los Angeles can mean only one thing: wining and dining under the stars at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, where a ticket can still be snagged for—yes—a buck. Currently celebrating its 100-year anniversary, the outdoor venue and summer home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with its 1927 Lloyd Wright-designed shell that has since undergone several incarnations, has been the backdrop for boldfaced names of all stripes.

FEATURES | By Sophie Bress

Through dance history, finding my own

“Confidence, Sophie. You need to work on your confidence.” That’s the voice of every dance teacher I’ve ever had, a cacophony of mental noise as I hastily pack my things for my morning contemporary class at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. I’ve never been to the Pillow before, despite reading about it every year since about age 12, when I learned what it was. Growing up dancing in Wyoming, and then moving to California to continue studying dance in college, I’ve always been on the wrong side of the country. This year, though, I’m finally in the right place at the...

REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

Summer Fling

Philadelphia’s 17-year young BalletX has gifted the city with more than 100 world premiere contemporary ballets and then taken them on the road around the nation. Known for commissioning emerging and established choreographers from many countries, it has had some great successes. Among them, Rena Butler’s breathless “The Under Way,” which Covid relegated to film, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s staggeringly original “Castrati,” Tobin Del Cuore’s marvelous “Beside Myself,” and numerous delights from its co-founder and long-time resident choreographer for the Philadelphia Ballet, Matthew Neenan. Not to mention choreographers of the stature of Nicolo Fonte, Kevin O’Day, and the inimitable Jodie Gates...

REVIEWS | By Karen Hildebrand

Dear Diary

When the inclination is to create, as the award-winning choreographer Amy Seiwert says, “the most brilliant thing that anyone’s ever seen,” what happens when you’re given permission to be less than perfect? This is one question the Michael Smuin protégée who went on to direct the Sacramento Ballet for two seasons is asking with her innovative series, Sketch. For the project’s twelfth iteration, Seiwert invited Natasha Adorlee, formerly of ODC/Dance and Robert Moses’ Kin; and rising star, Joshua L. Peugh, founder of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, to join her with a group of eight stellar dance artists to create new works...

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

An Interplay of Shadow and Light

Australasian Dance Collective finally presented its second iteration of the triple bill “Three” to a very eager audience. Originally slated to be performed back in February, the Brisbane floods caused the production to be halted in its tracks. Mid-tech rehearsal everything stopped—the dancers were evacuated, the theatre flooded, and people patiently waited to hear about the future of “Three.” Thankfully, nearly five months later, the production was staged in all its sensory splendour, and audiences flocked to the theatre to support the three new Australian works.

REVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

Resplendently human

Even despite countless efforts not to, the concert dance world can feel inaccessible. At its most avant-garde, the form can come off as niche, esoteric, and difficult to understand, especially to those without a background in it. Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love,” turns all these assumptions on their head.

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Movement Innovation with Molly Lynch

In 1991, Molly Lynch, who was then director of the Orange County-based Ballet Pacifica, launched an annual three-week workshop, Pacifica Choreographic Project, to provide the company with new works created for her dancers by four guest choreographers. Fast forward to 2004, when Lynch, who’d resigned from Ballet Pacifica the year before, founded the National Choreographic Initiative (NCI). Its mission, however, was essentially the same: to provide emerging and mid-career contemporary ballet choreographers a three-week laboratory to foster new works, with the workshopped dances then performed on stage for an audience.

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Rebecca Deczynski

Firebird Rising

Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

Rare Birds

It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

Lord of the Dance

The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.

REVIEWS | Eoin Fenton

Jack of Hearts

As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

School Report

One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.