Marlene Monteiro Freitas – Bacchae: Prelude to a Purge – New York
★★★★★ 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.
Merce Cunningham Trust – Night of 100 Solos, Centennial Event – New York
★★★★✰ 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.
Jerome Robbins / Luca Veggetti – Watermill – New York
★★★✰✰ 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 Festival 2018 – New York
★★★★✰ DanceAfrica is a welcome reminder of the uniquely universal powers of dance and music.
James Thierrée / Compagnie du Hanneton – The Toad Knew – New York
★★✰✰✰ The best moments in The Toad Knew are comic, but there aren’t enough of them. Old-fashioned clowning is sprinkled throughout the production…
Malpaso Dance Company – Dreaming of Lions – New York
★★★✰✰ 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.
Batsheva Dance Company – Last Work – New York
★★✰✰✰ 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.
Lucinda Childs Dance Company – Available Light – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Available Light is merciless, and in the best way…
Mark Morris Dance Group – The Hard Nut – New York
★★★★✰ Few alternative takes on tradition survive this long and The Hard Nut remains as subversive as it is satisfying.
Sounds of India Festival – Mark Morris Dance Group & Kerala Kalamandalam – New York
★★★★✰ 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…
Compagnie Yoann Bourgeois – Minuit – New York
★★★✰✰ Minuit is more of a meditation on the elegance of physical reality and how it can be manipulated in the name of artifice.
Shen Wei Dance Arts – Neither – New York
★★✰✰✰ The effect of Shen’s “Neither,” like that of the original opera, is decidedly muted.
The Holy Body Tattoo – monumental – New York
★★✰✰✰ 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.
Youth America Grand Prix – Gala 2016 – New York
★★✰✰✰ 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…
Mariinsky Ballet – A Tribute to Maya Plisetskaya, Program B – New York
★★✰✰✰ What’s going on in the head office at the Mariinsky Ballet?
Trisha Brown Dance Company – Set and Reset, Present Tense, Newark (Niweweorce) – New York
★★★★✰ “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…”
Mark Morris Dance Group – The Hard Nut – New York
As with the Balanchine version, the Hard Nut’s success is a foregone conclusion.
Souleymane Badolo – Yimbégré – New York
What constitutes an African dance? What meaning lies behind the steps? Souleymane Badolo, born and trained in Burkina Faso and a resident of Brooklyn since 2009, has been exploring this question for years…
Dance Heginbotham – Angel’s Share, Diamond, Easy Win – New York
Heginbotham has a knack for choosing just the right music for his dances, none of it hackneyed or used solely for its atmospheric qualities: no Arvo Pärt, no Philip Glass…
Satellite Collective – BAM Fisher bill – New York
Collaboration can be a wondrous thing, but it’s no guarantee.
