★★★✰✰ Mark Morris Dance Group performs at Brooklyn Bridge Park. It's a triple bill including a premiere - Water
Tag - Brooklyn Academy of Music
★★★★✰ DELIRIOUS Dances / Edisa Weeks' "3 RITES: Liberty" is a solo that graphically shows why the Declaration of Independence did not, & does not, mean “liberty” for many African Americans...
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…
★★★★★ 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.
★★★★✰ What impresses overall is the clarity of the technique; the precision and control it requires. And the way it enlarges the dancers, distilling their strengths, stretching them to the limit.
★★★✰✰ 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.
★★★★✰ DanceAfrica is a welcome reminder of the uniquely universal powers of dance and music.
★★✰✰✰ The best moments in The Toad Knew are comic, but there aren’t enough of them. Old-fashioned clowning is sprinkled throughout the production...
★★★✰✰ Dreaming of Lions ...is an ambitious work, an hour-long, semi-abstract meditation on Ernest Hemingway’s tale of maritime endurance, The Old Man and the Sea.
★★✰✰✰ Last Work is not unlike other Batsheva pieces which use an assemblage of vignettes, however it doesn’t hang together as cohesively as say, Sadeh21.
★★★✰✰ Available Light is merciless, and in the best way...
★★★★✰ Few alternative takes on tradition survive this long and The Hard Nut remains as subversive as it is satisfying.
★★★★✰ This year’s White Light Festival, at Lincoln Center, has spawned a mini-festival of its own, Sounds of India, curated by the modern-dance choreographer Mark Morris. Why Morris? Because he has been going to India since the eighties...
★★★✰✰ Minuit is more of a meditation on the elegance of physical reality and how it can be manipulated in the name of artifice.
★★✰✰✰ The effect of Shen’s “Neither,” like that of the original opera, is decidedly muted.
★★✰✰✰ There are times when you wonder if bones have been broken, or organs perforated. On the whole however, the hour and a half work is largely characterised by the violent, repetitive and neurotic gestures.
★★✰✰✰ Like all galas, this was quite a mixed bag. Over 200 students trooped on and offstage in a veritable tornado of activity before the veteran YAGP dancers stepped out for the showstopping stuff...
★★✰✰✰ What’s going on in the head office at the Mariinsky Ballet?
★★★★✰ "One of the things I admire most about these works is the degree to which men and women are interchangeable. Brown’s movement has no maleness or femaleness attached to it..."
As with the Balanchine version, the Hard Nut’s success is a foregone conclusion.