Last spring, live dance began its gradual return to New York City. The wait had been long, and the longing intense. I remember the first performance I saw in New York as if it were yesterday.
Archive - December 2021
With Lauren Cuthbertson and William Bracewell in the lead and Isabella Gasparini as Clara. Performances of The Nutcracker are set to resume at The Royal Opera House on 5 January 2022. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
At least there are some memorable performances to recall from 2021: at the beginning of the year none of us had any idea when we might sit in a theatre and watch live dance again...
★★★★✰ That Sarasota Ballet, a relatively small company, performs Giselle so well is a testimony the dancers’ hard work & Barbieri’s abilities as a stager.
★★★✰✰ "The English National Ballet 'Nutcracker' is a bit of alright and it's almost bound to send you home happier than you arrived." starts Bruce Marriott's review of a Christmas ballet that can both please and give pause for thought...
★★★★✰ If you find the combination of contemporary dance and musical form entrancing, this program is for you.
★★★★✰ With his Nutcracker! Matthew Bourne really wants the audience to have a good time and he knows how to deliver it...
★★★★★ "Bijayini Satpathy premieres 'Abhipsaa – A Seeking': An Artist’s Journey into and out of Solitude" says Karen Greenspan who saw Satpathy's deeply impressive triple bill at Duke Performances.
★★★✰✰ This year, the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo’s visit could not have been better timed. As a new Covid variant closes in, we all need a little cheering up...
★★★★✰ "It’s not often that I’ve seen a Nutcracker receive a standing ovation, but as the curtain fell and Clara ran to greet her mother, there was nothing to do but stand and applaud."
★★★★★ "I was particularly taken with... 'Woman with a Parrot', both for its restrained composition and for the remarkable performance given by Odissi dancer and scholar Kaustavi Sarkar."
★★★★✰ The choices Jamar Roberts made for his final show were, unsurprisingly, apt. The program began with a solo for himself, You Are the Golden Hour that Would Evanesce, created for the occasion...
★★★★✰ ...rarely are dancers treated as more than conduits for a choreographer’s vision, and in Roots you engage with real people as well as with choreographic ideas.
★★★✰✰ Akram Khan dedicates his solo Xenos to the anonymous Indian soldiers who lost their lives in the trenches of WW1 fighting a battle that wasn’t theirs.
"Confessional and scathing" that's "NYCB soloist Georgina Pazcoguin’s frank, f**k-filled, adults-only 'Swan Dive: The Making of a Rogue Ballerina.'"
★★★★✰ In New York, the holidays are inseparable from the Ailey season and this year, despite everything, has that same celebratory feeling. Marina Harss on new works by Jamar Roberts and Robert Battle.
★★★★✰ The uniqueness of this R&J lies not with Sergei Polunin but in the love letter it represents between the choreographer, Johan Kobborg, and his life partner, Alina Cojocaru.
★★★✰✰ Annie-B Parsons’ play-with-movement is based on Guy de Cointet’s 1982 play Five Sisters, an atmospheric meditation on vapid 1980’s Los Angeles. It also draws, ever-so-delicately, from Chekhov’s play Three Sisters....
★★★★✰ Celebration Gala is not a red-carpet event with super stars on the stage but instead, a well curated showcase of The Australian Ballet’s principal artists, senior artists and soloists dancing in 10 different pas de deux.
★★★★✰ Stunning performances, an inspired choice of choreographers and a surprise film, remind us that Scottish Dance Theatre is a company to celebrate and get very excited about.