Dance
Sin-sational: NYCB Mixes Brecht and Balanchine
Thought-provokingly revived at New York City Ballet earlier this month, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1933 The Seven Deadly Sins is mercilessly unsparing of its audience’s feelings. It parades before us every act of compromise and hypocrisy, both individual and collective, of which we—spectators, society—may have been guilty. Just as when it was new last...
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...
The Takeover
When guest stars rule dance It sometimes seems today as if every ballet company in the world is fronted by a representative sampling of about a dozen perpetual guest stars. Each has a company that they at least nominally call home, but they are continuously orbiting out on their own. Sometimes they need no more...
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...
Up, Down and Sideways
The year 2012 can wait until my next column. But let’s hope for—let’s go so far as to look forward to—dance events as memorable as those that took place in the closing week of 2011. Winding up its annual City Center season, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater gave an admirable rendition of Paul Taylor’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...
Heaven Sent Flamenca: Noche Flamenca’s profound singing/dancing
Thank God for Noche Flamenca. Or rather thank Martin Santangelo, Noche’s artistic director, and Soledad Barrio, the company’s leading lady, who have been conferring a yearly miracle on New York since 1998: an exceptional flamenco ensemble that blends traditional material with a contemporary gestalt and profound mastery of the form. The company’s six-day run at...
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...
Dancing in Character: Pina Recalled, Gelsey Returns
In Pina Bausch’s choreo-stagings, outside and indoors trade places; in Wim Wenders’ new 3-D documentary, Pina, we see in the crispest of photographic detail her deep-pile stage floors, where dancers are forced to rise in relevé in the loam. Her troupe braved elements that were punishing, even if simulated. We watch them get soiled in...
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...
Personas in Motion
Kyle Abraham’s dance biography In the Vimeo trailer shot by visual artist Carrie Schneider for choreographer Kyle Abraham’s new work, Live! The Realest MC, a young boy hurries along a lonely city street, interrupted by images of cracked pavement and barbed wire. The camera stutters, stops and starts, switching quickly from his face to boys...
Mind and Body Math
The Cunninghams carry on You wouldn’t know it from watching him on stage, but Merce Cunningham dancer John Hinrichs “would describe [himself] more as a math guy than as a dancer,” he recently informed me by email sent while on the company’s “Legacy Tour,” its final circuit around the world. The company will be at...
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...
