With Pepperland about to tour the UK for 6 weeks we talk to designer Elizabeth Kurtzman about her striking costumes and what it's like working with Mark Morris...
Author - Marina Harss
★★★✰✰ Liebeslieder Walzer is one of the most precious of all Balanchine’s ballets; within its fifty-minute span it seems to contain a world of emotion, both profound and infinitely civilized.
★★★★✰ What’s most compelling about the show, really, is its sense of freedom, combined with a strong family-feeling.
★★★★✰ The choreographer Camille A. Brown has a rare talent – the ability to make you understand a situation or state of mind through dance.
Marina Harss talks to a legend about another legend and the greatest classical choreographer of them all - Marius Petipa. Full of interesting insights...
★★★✰✰ The piece is strenuous, filled with running and partnering that, at first, verges on violent, and eventually turns rapturous, but never beautiful – De Keersmaeker never cedes to the lure of beauty...
★★★★✰ Nothing revives a repertory like new casting. So we can be grateful to the interim leadership at New York City Ballet for reconsidering who gets to dance some of the company’s most elemental repertory: Agon, Apollo, Serenade.
★★★★✰ There has been a generational shift at New York City Ballet, that much was clear last night in a program of Stravinsky ballets that included two major débuts and several smaller ones...
★★★✰✰ Both El Penitente and Hérodiade are from the 40’s, a period when Graham was transitioning from exploration of American and Native-American themes to a more mythical mode.
Other years have been more exciting, I think, but this one has had its share of remarkable performances, including a few thrilling ones. Here, in no particular order, are the ones that really stood out, for one reason or another.
★★★✰✰ Come hell or high water, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker will return to New York City Ballet, filling the theatre night after night. Balanchine made a ballet built to last, and it has not disappointed.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Lazarus, Revelations ★★★★✰ New York, City Center 30 November 2018 www.alvinailey.org www.nycitycenter.org Forward to Ailey In March of 1958, Alvin Ailey presented his first evening of dance, at the 92nd Street Y. Sixty years on, the company is going strong, having survived the death of its founder in 1989 and the successful transfer of leadership from Ailey to...
★★★★✰ In the last several years, the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has developed a sideline to his main choreographic efforts: the reviving of ballets by Marius Petipa in a way that represents the original choreography with as much fidelity as possible...
★★★✰✰ It’s fascinating to see how Balanchinean charm and wit are interpreted by dancers for whom the Balanchine repertoire is more of a foreign language.
★★★✰✰ I was happy to discover that, yes, in fact, something about this more intimate, immersive setting did alter the work’s energy and rhythm, its overall feel.
★★★✰✰ The fall season is too brief, particularly because it always feels as though it takes the company a few days to warm itself up. The dancing at the gala on Oct. 17 was a little slapdash, but by Friday things had begun to settle.
★★★✰✰ Long Run is maniacally well constructed, intently and precisely performed, vigorous, and smart, and yet almost completely resistant to interpretation.
★★★★✰ At moments, I was ecstatically aware of the beauty of the body in motion.
★★★✰✰ No evening of new works is perfect; the excitement lies in the hope that at some point some magic will happen. And in that solo for Taylor Stanley by Kyle Abraham, we got a glimpse of that magic.
★★★★✰ The company seemed to be dancing with a special ferocity, as if to prove its worth and convince the world that this enterprise is, indeed, worth preserving and saving.