There’s no way around it: it’s been a miserable year for the performing arts here in the US... But still, there were highlights, moments in which for whatever reason, some spark illuminated the soul...
Author - Marina Harss
★★★✰✰ Program II of the Fall for Dance festival features premieres by Dormeshia and Kyle Abraham, plus excerpts of works by Balanchine and Lar Lubovitch...
★★★★✰ The Fall for Dance festival is an all digital affair this year and Program 1 included striking and heartfelt premieres by Jamar Roberts and Christopher Wheeldon...
There was a rush of emotion at seeing these extraordinary dancers doing the thing they do best. Their energy, precision, and drive, the way they change the space around them, is inspiring...
Royal Danish Ballet's Tobias Praetorius is an anomaly, a young dancer – he’s only 24 – who is already interested in playing character roles. He is also a choreographer and Marina Harss catches up with him about his latest project - a 'Pixiballet' (aimed at children) based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Princess and the Pea...
Alexei Ratmansky, the Covid-19 Interview - “Its’ like a dress rehearsal for retirement and it turns out that I’m not ready for it.”
★★★★✰ The Kaatsbaan Summer Festival offers the respite of communication without words, of the beauty of the body moving freely through space, and of shared experience.
★★★✰✰ In the last week of its winter season, New York City Ballet unveiled a new work by its resident choreographer, Justin Peck, to a score by the popular neo-Minimalist composer Nico Muhly. It was a homecoming of sorts for Peck...
★★★✰✰ The dance is spare and pedestrian, as is De Keersmaeker’s way, and lasts two hours, without intermission. And yet it’s not really a challenge to experience it all in one sitting.
★★★★✰ The four ballets make for a slightly over-long evening (both Episodes and Rodeo are substantial works). But it’s a small price to pay for seeing these rarities back onstage.
★★✰✰✰ At times the striking images and lithe, hyper-flexible dancers are enough to seduce the eye. But Cāo Sem Plumas is a frustrating piece, in which the live dancing is overshadowed by film...
★★★★✰ There was always something new around the corner, a surprising shape, a witty step, an unlikely transition. It’s clear that Ratmansky felt liberated by the unusual structure and soundscape...
★★★★✰ How is the company looking? ...the company looks good so far.
I don’t really believe in lists, but it’s admittedly fun to look back over the year and reflect on moments that have stayed with me. So here they are, in no particular order…
★★★★✰ Jamar Roberts' Ode was the centerpiece and the highlight of the company’s performance, which also included Aszure Barton’s Busk (a company premiere) and Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Ounce of Faith (a premiere).
★★★★✰ Some have called Dormeshia the greatest tapper of her generation. I’m wary of such titles, but what I can say is that she is a dancer of enormous sophistication, finesse, variety, and subtlety.
★★★★✰ This is a Giselle that is both familiar and new. Watching it on opening night was like seeing a faded painting regain its colors.
★★★★✰ This season, as part of the 75th anniversary of Appalachian Spring, Martha Graham Dance Company invited Troy Schumacher to create a new piece to be danced alongside the iconic work...
★★★★★ What this Bacchae resembles most is a kind of carnaval, an ordered mayhem in which up is down, all inhibitions are shed, and madness reigns.
★★★✰✰ The pairing of prestigious participants does not always guarantee success – a lesson learned again and again in the theater.