Author Archive
Stephen Petronio and Company Come to The Joyce
Stephen Petronio’s season looks like a fascinating mix, with his latest cutting-edge dance—infused with a Nordic sensibility—counterbalanced with a pivotal work from a decade ago. For the first time, he is adding someone else’s work to the company’s repertory: a 1970 structured improvisation by seminal Judson Dance Theater innovator Steve Paxton. And he has brought...
One Night of Tom Gold Dance
When New York City Ballet’s winter season ends Sunday, you’d expect the dancers to relax and put their feet up. But one contingent of prominent company members will be back on stage the following evening, performing works by their former colleague Tom Gold. Principal dancers Sara Mearns, Abi Stafford, Jared Angle, Tyler Angle and Robert...
Ib Andersen returns to NYC with Ballet Arizona
Mention Ib Andersen’s name to anyone who attended New York City Ballet during the 1980s and vivid, defining memories come flooding back. Already the youngest male principal ever named by the Royal Danish Ballet, he arrived in 1980 in time for George Balanchine’s final burst of creative genius. Technically prodigious and effortlessly musical, Andersen proved...
Pivot Around the World: Crystal Pite’s increasingly international company stops by New York City with ‘The You Show’
There have been intriguing glimpses of Crystal Pite’s work in and around New York in recent years, but the Canadian choreographer’s own company will be making its local debut next week. Founded in Vancouver as Kidd Pivot 10 years ago, the troupe became Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM when it received a three-year residency in that...
That Lubovitch Touch
This winter will play host to a varied program of choreographer Lar Lubovitch’s work Back in the 1980s, when live music was not the rarity it has become for dance performances, Lar Lubovitch often collaborated with Ransom Wilson, a prominent flutist and conductor. Among Wilson’s projects was the Solisti New York Orchestra, which was in...
Two for One: Cloud Gate 2 makes its NYC debut at The Joyce
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, the Taiwanese company that has brought its meditative, scenically stunning full-evening works to BAM five times since 1995, is a known quantity on these shores. But Cloud Gate 2, which gives four performances at The Joyce Theater next week, is making its first U.S. appearances in a five-city tour. Don’t let...
Flickers of Dance: Lincoln Center’s annual Dance on Camera Festival is a must-see
Now in its 40th year, Dance on Camera is at a new level of maturity. The annual event at the Walter Reade Theater that once fit into a three-day weekend has expanded to fill five days, Jan. 27–31, and within its brief duration has its own opening night, centerpiece and closing night films. This year’s...
Keely Garfield brings her surreal autobiography style to ‘Twin Pines’ at Danspace
“I like to layer meaning and imagery. I think that creates an opportunity for people to enter where they will; one will come in through that door or an open window, someone else is going to dive into the middle of it,” Keely Garfield said recently as she was readying Twin Pines for its Danspace...
Wheeldon and Dealin’: New York City Ballet returns with Balanchine and Wheeldon works
Following a brief winter hibernation after its five-week Nutcracker onslaught, New York City Ballet returns to its primary business this coming Tuesday, Jan. 17, when it opens its six-week winter repertory season. While the company’s repertory has been opened up to an increasing variety of choreographers in recent decades, the vast archive of George Balanchine’s...
Oh, Those Dancing Feet: The best of dance in 2011
Yes, there were plenty of lowlights, but a look back at the year in dance provides a good number of wonderful memories—performances that thrilled, inspired or surprised, that resonated long after one left the theater. Here, in no particular order, are those that stood out. Festival Dance by Mark Morris The initial delight in March...
Air Kisses at the Armory: Elizabeth Streb brings large-scale choreographic feats to the Park Avenue Armory
Forget that notorious comic-book Broadway musical; if you want to see truly amazing and daring—not to mention outrageously creative—performers defy gravity and travel at speeds you may not want to contemplate, make your way to the Park Avenue Armory. For the second of that adventurous institution’s December dance presentations, Elizabeth Streb is transforming the Armory’s...
Of ‘Home’ and ‘Revelations’: the Alvin Ailey company return to City Center
Moving in both new and familiar ways, but always with its own distinctive élan and communicative energy—the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is back for their annual five-week City Center season. While there hasn’t been anything resembling a major shake-up, the company is under new artistic direction, with Robert Battle having succeeded Judith Jamison following...
Shaker, Rattle and Dance: The Shakers get their chance to shine in ‘Angel Reapers’
Martha Clarke has long seemed especially at home in European milieus when creating her evocative dance-theater works. Although she’s a quintessentially American artist, her works have been primarily inspired by European visual art (Hieronymus Bosch, Toulouse-Lautrec), literature (Chekhov, Kafka), music (Scriabin) and film, which was the impetus for her dark, earthy Kaos, seen at New...
Supernatural Talent: A trio of artists conjure ‘Supernatural Wife’ at BAM
Founded 20 years ago by Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, Big Dance Theater has displayed a masterful originality in its productions, which incorporate unexpected, imaginative juxtapositions in a unique and persuasive style very much their own. Parson, a director-choreographer, and Lazar, a director-actor who often appears in plays and films, have explored a wide array...
Paul Taylor Goes Buggy
Paul Taylor’s fascination with—and affection for—insects is well-known, and has manifested itself in his choreography. His 1988 Counterswarm set two fiercely combative hordes of insect-like creatures against each other to thrilling effect, and in 1961 he created Insects and Heroes, in which the dancers moved in and out of stylized cages. Both of these were...
Ballet Next Premieres Nov. 21 at The Joyce
He retired from New York City Ballet last month with considerable fanfare. She slipped away from American Ballet Theatre earlier this year so unexpectedly that even dance insiders had no idea she’d given her final performance. Now these former principal dancers, Charles Askegard and Michele Wiles, are ready for their next move: a new venture...
Pulling the Strings: The marionettes of ‘Golem’ at La MaMa will do anything
These dancers truly come in all shapes and sizes. The moving figures in Golem, a production of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, range from miniature wooden marionettes (some of them made a century ago) to the lumbering, ominous title figure—a giant created out of clay—portrayed by Steven Ryan. Everyone and everything dances in this returning production,...
Stompers and Bomb Squads: ABT revives Twyla Tharp’s ‘In the Upper Room’
How many dances created in the past quarter-century are likely to endure? One might think of several Paul Taylor works (Company B, Promethean Fire), and certainly such landmark Mark Morris dances as Grand Duo and L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato have already becomes classics of their time. Jerome Robbins, during his final decade, created...
On the Scene at The Bessies
Monday’s Bessie Awards—much altered in format and relocated to the Apollo Theater—provided quite a fascinating evening on many counts. It was great to see throngs of Downtown dance luminaries and presenters lining up to go inside that legendary, way-uptown venue, and to observe the likes of ballet’s Wendy Whelan, Marcelo Gomes and Christopher Wheeldon in...
Fall for the Restored City Center
After an extensive overhaul, City Center is back open in time for Fall for Dance For the dance world, there can be no better news than the return to action of a newly renovated City Center, for many decades a welcoming home to dance companies. From providing New York City Ballet with its first home...
The Evolution of Dance Company Morphoses
The company’s name is familiar and the time of year is the same. But when Morphoses opens at The Joyce next week, it will be a very different enterprise than the one that had October seasons at City Center from 2007 to 2009. Much evolution has led to the performances of the world premiere of...
