Sarasota Ballet – Monotones I & II, Symphony of Sorrows, There Where She Loved – New York
★★✰✰✰ After viewing Ashton on a bill with works by Ricardo Graziano and Christopher Wheeldon, I’m not worried about Ashton’s relevance nor his resonance with a future audience. …Both the Graziano and Wheeldon posed some problems from what some might consider a “female” perspective.
Ashley Bouder Project – Red Spotted Purple, Duet, Alas, Symbiotic Twin, In Pursuit Of – New York
★★★✰✰ Bouder’s pick-up ensemble of eight, which she refers to as an arts collaborative, reflects her ideals. It is racially diverse; the choreographers include both men and women. Not all the choreographers are white. This should be par for the course, but it’s not.
Dada Masilo / The Dance Factory – Giselle – New York
★★★✰✰ Masilo’s is an uncompromising, ritualistic version of the story, with little room for redemption, and in its final scene, in which the spirits amass and advance upon Giselle’s seducer again and again, it tips over into a kind of animistic brutality…
Evidence, A Dance Company – Come Ye, March, Den of Dreams, Upside Down, Dancing Spirit – New York
★★★★✰ Ronald K. Brown is one of those choreographers who returns to a similar mode in piece after piece, so it’s easy to take him for granted. But what a powerful mode it is.
Catching up with Morphed – Tero Saarinen Soul Shifting in New York
Some dance can be really thought provoking and that seems to have been the case with Tero Saarinen’s “Morphed” – at least for Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer who recently caught up with the work at the Joyce in New York.
Liz Gerring Dance Company – Horizon – New York
★★★★✰ Gerring’s dances may be spare – she doesn’t go in for complicated designs or music – but they certainly don’t feel dry. They teem with energy and life.
Jessica Lang – Catching up with the Choreographer and Director
Answer: “Do it!” Question: “What advice would you give to a young dancer who aspires to choreograph?”
Twyla Tharp Dance – The Raggedy Dances, The Fugue, Entr’acte, Dylan Love Songs – New York
★★✰✰✰ It all sounds terribly promising, and yet the evening falls as flat as a soufflé left in the oven for too long.
Gemma Bond Dance – Then and Again, The Giving, Impressions – New York
★★★✰✰ It’s intriguing to see pas de deux that are clearly conceived from a woman’s point of view.
Scottish Ballet – Sinfonietta Giocosa, Motion of Displacement, Ten Poems – New York
★★★★✰ Scottish Ballet came ready to impress, and impress it did.
Compagnie CNDC-Angers / Robert Swinston – Inlets 2, Place, How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run – New York
★★★★✰ For its second visit to the Joyce (the first was in 2015) Compagnie CNDC brought an excellent and well-balanced program. Two works from the sixties, followed one from the eighties…
Stephen Petronio Company – Bloodlines: works by Rainer, Paxton, Halprin, Petronio – New York
★★★✰✰ Two interesting impulses have been evident in the modern and post-modern dance scene in New York of late….
(Works danced: Diagonal, Trio A With Flags, Chair-Pillow, Excerpt from Goldberg Variations, The Courtesan and the Crone, Untitled Touch)
Joffrey Ballet – Body of Your Dreams, Fool’s Paradise, Bells – New York
★★✰✰✰ Some vein connected Bells and Fool’s Paradise on Thursday night and it wasn’t encouraging. Both pieces overuse the female body as a vulnerable entity…
Hamburg Ballet – Old Friends – New York
★✰✰✰✰ Dancers roam around the stage connecting, disconnecting, clinging and separating in a drifting non-specific haze of memories. Who are the exes, who are the friends? Who are the never-weres? Who knows.
Wendy Whelan & Brian Brooks – Some of a Thousand Words – New York
★★★✰✰ Over two years after her retirement from New York City Ballet, Wendy Whelan remains a sight to behold.
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.
Ballet de Lorraine – Devoted, HOK Solo Pour Ensemble, Sounddance – New York
★★★✰✰ This winter, New York is getting to see more Merce Cunningham than it has in years, thanks to visits from various European companies. It is a sad fact that Europe has always been more supportive of Cunningham than the choreographer’s own country.
Complexions Contemporary Ballet – Gutter Glitter, So Not A…, Star Dust – New York
★★✰✰✰ Slated as a “rock opera style production” created in the late David Bowie’s honour, Star Dust is a lengthy, razzle dazzle suite of dances set to Bowie’s most popular tunes.
BODYTRAFFIC – Death Defying Dances, 3 Preludes, Private Games: Chapter One – New York
★★✰✰✰ BODYTRAFFIC, the Los Angeles-based contemporary dance troupe, drew a robust crowd to the Joyce on Friday night.
Memorable Performances of 2016 – New York
Marina Harss with her personal selection of New York dance memories this last year…
