Dance
The Season of Cambodia
Royal Ballet of Cambodia performs Apsara Mera at BAM Cambodian classical dancers move as slowly as rain sliding down a window, their hands curving and curling in intricate patterns as they look out into space as if enchanted by an unseen world. Supremely elegant in gold bangles and shimmering dresses and elaborate headdresses that replicate...
Keeping Ballet Honest
New York Theater Ballet rediscovers and thrills Many people love dance but not ballet: too mannered, too toney. To counteract that perception, Diana Byer founded the New York Theater Ballet to inspire both a love for, and comprehensive understanding of, the art and how it evolves. To that end, the NYTB presents revivals of classic...
Joining Forces
‘Focus Dance’ at Joyce Theater Rarely can dance lovers get to more than one performance a week and even less often do they have a chance to see two choreographers’ work on one program. How terrific then that the Joyce Theater is presenting “Focus Dance” Jan. 8-13. Part of a weeklong series of performances organized...
Final Fantasy
Pina Bausch’s last work comes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music When Joe Mellilo, executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, traveled to Wuppertal, Germany, in June 2009, to see choreographer/director Pina Bausch’s new work, “… como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si …” (Like moss on a stone), he had no...
Lightning Strikes
Fagan and Marsalis’ ‘Lighthouse/Lightning Rod’ Opens Fall Season at BAM Choreographer Garth Fagan and co-founder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Wynton Marsalis met through their love of jazz. More than 30 years ago, Fagan took his company to hear Marsalis play, and afterward Marsalis caught rehearsals of Garth Fagan Dance. They were...
Bravo Bailar!
New York Celebrates the Art of Flamenco No one can make the mistake of calling New York the home of flamenco, but ever since the Great White Way crowned Jose Greco “New Broadway Personality of the Year” in 1952, the city has made flamenco its own. Aficionados make daily pilgrimages to Lincoln Center’s Performing Arts...
Dido Undragged
Mark Morris presents female revelers Stephanie Blythe almost stole the show from the Mark Morris Dance Group singing Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas while Morris’s dancers performed his 1989 depiction of the love-doomed ancient queen of Carthage. Blythe faced, and largely met the same challenge that Kirsten Flagstad did in her 1952 reference recording of Dido:...
Up with Tutus
Ballet music—one man’s evolution The older I get, the smarter, wiser and more talented Verdi becomes. Funny how it works that way. When I was about 15, Verdi was basically a purveyor of corny tunes accompanied by oompah-pah. How had he managed to compose that masterly requiem, amid those silly operas? These days, I stand...
In Retro Step
Paris Opera Ballet’s Bourrees The Paris Opera Ballet, France’s national ballet company, had both a rocky and triumphant opening night last week. It was a momentous occasion: their first New York visit since 1996; their final U.S. appearance under the direction of outgoing chief Brigitte Lefèvre. The company arrived after stops in Chicago and Washington,...
The CityArts Interview
Béatrice Massin Béatrice Massin is a specialist in Baroque dance. She was co-choreographer of Lully’s Atys when the opera was presented by Les Arts Florissants at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last fall. She has choreographed for several films and directs her own dance troupe, Compagnie Fêtes Galantes, and school, the Atelier Baroque. She brings...
With Catlike Tread
Jason Samuels Smith at the Joyce Theater Jason Samuels Smith electrifies the stage with the grace and fierceness of a cat. The heir of Gregory Hines, he pushes the boundaries of tap, with a sure grasp of its history and potential. Only 31, Smith has already won numerous awards, including the 2009 Dance Magazine Award,...
On Your Gardel
Romula Larrea Show Off the Tango Revolution Despite the popular image of the tango as a dance performed by stiff-necked couples dressed in tails and chiffon jerking their heads about like lizards, tango as an artform issued forth from the poor urban districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo at the end of the 19th century,...
Critics Picks
CLASSICAL Reading Music: The Music Manuscripts Online project began in 2007, providing more than 900 manuscripts (almost 42,000 pages) of classic compositions now digitized and described for posterity. View works by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert and Schumann, among many others, all in their own hand....
Youth and Life Force
Bolshoi and Kirov vitality preserved Legendary Russian dancers show why they are legends in the new DVD Treasures of the Russian Ballet (ICA Classics/Naxos). It contains performances by Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet and (then) Leningrad’s Kirov filmed by the BBC in London from 1956 to 1963, some on stage, some in the television studio. The longest...
CRITICS’ PICKS
GALLERIES Editorial Eye: Aperture Foundation presents “Delpire & Co.,” featuring a half-century of achievement in the life and career of visionary French publisher, editor and curator Robert Delpire. Through July 19, Aperture Foundation, 547 W. 27th St., 4th Fl., 212-505-5555, aperture.org. [Valerie Gladstone] CLASSICAL Fiddler with the Phil: Violinist Pinchas Zukerman plays with the New...
Preserved Expectations
Ballet’s Perilous History on Video Not enough of Natalia Makarova’s high artistic quality nor her particular qualities were on view at the tribute to her staged by Youth America Grand prix late last month. The videos shown of her performances existed almost in a class of their own. I don’t think that this was deliberate,...
Not Standing Still
Dance Doc Highlights Jacob’s Pillow A documentary filmmaker has two responsibilities. The first is to make an interesting subject even more interesting. The second is to make a good film. Director Ron Honsa hits both marks with Never Stand Still, an intimate look at dance that will galvanize anyone who’s ever moved his body to...
All Along the Lines
Alonzo King’s Ballet at the Joyce When Alonzo King established LINES Ballet in 1982 in San Francisco, few believed he could maintain a new company in the city where the San Francisco Ballet had long captured the area’s ballet audience. Moreover, King did not conform to the typical ballet artistic director—he grew up in Santa...
I Come to Praise
Anna Liceica and The Joffrey Survive I want to give high praise to ex-American Ballet Theater soloist Anna Liceica, now a member of Ballet Verité, who danced recently month at a concert honoring Levi HaLevi. He was a rabbi and civil rights activist who was the father-in-law of Verité choreographer Seth Gertsacov. In Manhattan Movement...
Life-Long Extensions
Sylvie Guillem stretches out Even Sylvie Guillem’s not doing it anymore, so ballerinas everywhere can just put their legs down (a bit)—can’t they? That was one takeaway from Guillem’s concert at the Koch theater early this month, presented by the Joyce Theater Foundation. Now 47, Guillem put her pointe shoes back on last year to...
Spanish Steps
Corella’s Barcelona Ballet Fulfills a Dream Many great ballet dancers dream of starting their own companies, though few get the opportunity. Even as he performed with American Ballet Theater, Angel Corella was plotting to establish a ballet company in his native Spain. Unlike most European countries, Spain had never been able to sustain a first-rate...
