Over the course of an hour and a half the story is told, more or less, twice: first in swift pantomime (aided by projections) and then in a series of more intensely danced interludes.
Archive - November 2012
It’s a very successful work that manages to combine the oblique with the direct and engaging, and is both funny and sharply observed.
So far as I know, no major company has ever before attempted a time-shifted Bayadère, so Hübbe had the whole of history to pick from. He chose the later years of the British Raj...
McGregor’s influence is visible across the programme, not so much in the movement style but in the extreme formal abstraction of the work. A little form can go a long way...
Well, performing for me is really about that experience of giving to the audience. In the studio you work and perfect things, you collaborate with your partner, but for me it’s about what happens on the stage, the ability to give something, to your partner, to the audience.
The company premiere of The Prodigal Son was the centerpiece and highlight of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s second all-Balanchine program at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater - a program that also included Divertimento No. 15 and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.
When something is beautifully made it never gets old. So it is with Balanchine’s Nutcracker, first performed by New York City Ballet in 1954 and honed to near-perfection over the years.
Interviews with Alexander Whitley, Paolo Mangiola and Robert Binet about their new pieces commissioned by Wayne McGregor | Random Dance and the Royal Opera House...
One issue that arose is the fact that too many people in the Rain Room – whether dancers or audience – really starts to destroy the illusion of controlling the rainfall or being enclosed in the rain.
It’s an interesting evening, showing both choreographer and company at their best and at somewhat less than that.
Naharin is at his best when working with groups, particularly mixed groups or groups of men. There isn’t much that is gender specific in the work; women dance much the same steps as men and there is little male / female partnering. What there is looks oddly perfunctory.
36 pictures by Dave Morgan...
It’s a masterful, mesmerising piece.
When watching them perform one understands what dance critic Joan Acocella meant when she said: “Every single time Suzanne Farrell sets a Balanchine ballet – it rises from the dead.”
...once she begins to dance, words become irrelevant: the clarity and detail of her dancing leaves no room for ambiguity or doubt. Like a master story-teller she is able to change registers and points of view in the course of a single solo...
36 pictures by Dave Morgan...
The Unkindness of Ravens - collaborative efforts are not easy, especially when they are cooked up over a short period. The two companies are just similar enough - contemporary, ballet-based - to make the project even more complicated.
Freedom came when the performers were allowed to dance. And that just wasn’t often enough.
9 pictures by Dave Morgan...
Birmingham Hippodrome performance dates: Friday 15 – Saturday 23 February 2013 (includes a Sunday performance on 17 February at 1pm and a 6.30pm performance on Friday 22 February). Then Tours...