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Dance News
03/10/10 - artsjournal.com
After Shooting, Israeli Teens Find Their Way Back To Dance
Wounded in an attack on a Tel Aviv center for LGBT youth, a pair of teenagers "had studied dance, concentrating on ballroom and hip-hop, but their gunshot injuries left them without sensation or mobility below their ribs. Confined to wheelchairs, they believed their dancing days were over. Enter Daniel Banks and Adam McKinney of New York-based DNAWORKS."... Source
03/09/10 - nytimes.com
Dance Review | Limón Dance Company: At the 92nd Street Y, an Old-School Refresher Course
The Limón Dance Company gave three performances at the 92nd Street Y over the weekend.
Source
03/09/10 - danceviewtimes.com
Taylor's Back in Town
"Sunset," "Private Domain," "Cascade" Paul Taylor Dance Company City Center New York NY February 28, 2010 By Carol Pardo Copyright ©2010 Carol Pardo Itinerant magicians surprise their audiences by pulling rabbits from a hat. Where Paul Taylor and his company are concerned, the surprises are the dances:131 and counting. This performance started on a high note, one of the highest in the repertory. "Sunset" is a meditation on courtship, flirtation, succor, loss, death and grief. War hangs over this vernal gathering in a park, though it is explicit only in the men’s costumes with their khaki shirts and red berets. Every interaction among the six men and four women in the cast is transient; some are tinged with desperation. The afternoon’s events will live on only in memory. Eran Bugge caught this exactly as she clutched a beret dropped by one of the parting soldiers. Her gaze turned inward; her face froze. Death was closing in. The duet for two men that comprises the second movement of "Sunset" is one of the most moving essays on friendship in dance. It begins with the two men falling backward in slow motion. Michael Trusnovic and Robert Kleinendorst executed it breathtakingly perfectly. As... Source
03/09/10 - sfgate.com
Lunar New Year ushers in a singles mixer
Online dating services may have taken the place of the singles bars of earlier eras, but photographer and philanthropist Leah Lau decided to re-create the experience for dozens of her single friends by throwing a Single Mingle Lunar New Year Menagerie dance...
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03/08/10 - artsjournal.com
Staging Merce Without Merce
In the Cunningham studio, "dancers were rehearsing Roaratorio, a work last performed by the modern dance company in 1997. A lean, young man shuffled and picked up his feet in a series of pas de chats in front of Robert Swinston, assistant to the choreographer, and Patricia Lent, a former dancer who had performed the original version of the dance. They both shook their heads. 'I interpreted that as this step,' Ms. Lent, 50, said as she demonstrated the move. 'But I don't know. Maybe. Maybe.'"... Source
03/08/10 - artsjournal.com
Patti LuPone To Make NYCity Ballet Debut
"She's done Broadway, now it's on to the ballet. On Monday, New York City Ballet announced that Patti LuPone will make her New York City Ballet debut in a new production of The Seven Deadly Sins as part of the company's 2011 spring season."... Source
03/08/10 - danceviewtimes.com
Double Setting
“Jewels” New York City Ballet David H. Koch Theater New York, NY February 27, 2010 (matinee and evening) by Leigh Witchel copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel “Jewels” has long passed from being a treasure unique to New York City Ballet’s repertory, but the company closed its season with a weekend of performances that reasserted NYCB’s claim to the setting. There was solid work from the principals to the orchestra as well as several debuts. Jennie Somogyi was scheduled to make her debut in Violette Verdy’s role in “Emeralds” but because of injury, Abi Stafford danced all the performances. Stafford performed gently, with elegant port de bras and delicate detail. In the afternoon, her solo seemed to intimate the girlish delight of a debutante. She seemed to mature from afternoon to evening, giving a more animated and womanly reading. Her counterpart at the matinee in Mimi Paul’s role was Jenifer Ringer. She and Stafford are complementary; they have a similar mezzo emotional range and elegant upper body, but age has given Ringer color and theatrical weight. Sara Mearns paired oddly with Stafford in the evening and almost overpowered her own solo: when she laid her face in her hands close... Source
03/08/10 - sfgate.com
Lunar New Year ushers in a singles mixer
Online dating services may have taken the place of the singles bars of earlier eras, but photographer and philanthropist Leah Lau decided to re-create the experience for dozens of her single friends by throwing a Single Mingle Lunar New Year Menagerie dance...
More
03/08/10 - sfgate.com
Demonstrators on the go, then and now
"If there's one thing I can say about a Berkeley protester," said a young girl on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley during Thursday's national Day of Action, "they really can throw a dance party." The girl was overheard by Chronicle photographer Mike Kepka, whose...
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03/07/10 - artsjournal.com
Investigating The Science Of Dance
"When dancers improvise, do they think about how they're moving, or does it just come naturally? And if they are thinking, what kinds of thoughts are they having?"... Source
03/07/10 - artsjournal.com
The Twyla Tharp Phenomenon
"There's hardly an area of dance that Ms. Tharp hasn't conquered since she entered the New York scene in 1965, two years after graduating from Barnard College. As her work on movies like "Hair" and "Amadeus" attests, Ms. Tharp embraces the chance to reach large audiences."... Source
03/07/10 - nytimes.com
Dance: Tharp Is Back Where the Air Is Rarefied
Though Twyla Tharp’s Broadway show “Come Fly Away” as a whole is new, certain dances have long been a part of Ms. Tharp’s Sinatra repertory.
Source
03/07/10 - sfgate.com
History guides Matthew Rushing to plot future
In the professional dancer's life, which is always circumscribed by the realities of aging, a sustained injury strikes some performers as a death sentence. But when Matthew Rushing was sidelined from a European tour with the Alvin Ailey American Dance...
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03/06/10 - sfgate.com
Trisha Brown sees art springing from actions
Dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown belongs to a generation of New York artists who, at the turn of the 1970s, considered the arts as products of behavior, rather than of subjectivity or creative invention. The title of her show at Mills - "Trisha Brown: So...
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03/05/10 - sfgate.com
Trisha Brown sees art springing from actions
Dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown belongs to a generation of New York artists who, at the turn of the 1970s, considered the arts as products of behavior, rather than of subjectivity or creative invention. The title of her show at Mills - "Trisha Brown: So...
More
03/04/10 - artsjournal.com
Frederick Ashton For Dummies
From another of The Guardian's 'Step-by-Step Guides' to dancemakers: "Inspired by the dancing of Pavlova and Fonteyn, Ashton's lyrical, restrained choreography created a very English kind of ballet."... Source
03/04/10 - artsjournal.com
Voguing At The Whitney Biennial
"Spinning disco balls, a booming bass beat, outlandish costumes and Madonna are what usually come to mind when you think of voguing. But beneath all the trimmings is a dance form. Something of a cult form, too, but the Whitney Biennial has trained a new spotlight on it this month with Untitled and Untitled (New Way) by the video artist Rashaad Newsome."... Source
03/04/10 - danceviewtimes.com
Fresh, Fresher, the Freshest
"Petrouchka," "Diving Into the Lilacs," "in the middle, somewhat elevated" San Francisco Ballet War Memorial Opera House San Francisco, CA March 2, 2010 by Rita Felciano Copyright © Rita Felciano, 2010 It took San Francisco Ballet almost a hundred years to premiere Fokine's "Petrouchka." (Oakland Ballet first performed it in the Bay Area in 1990). While this Diaghilev era gem was the evening's most anticipated event, in pure dance terms Yuri Possokhov's reprise from last season, "Diving Into the Lilacs," and William Forsythe's "in the middle, somewhat elevated", which entered SFB's rep in 1989, proved to be more rewarding. As for the music, Stravinsky, particularly in the lively and crisp reading that Martin West gave this timeless score, by far out-bested Boris Tchaikovsky and Thom Willems. I hadn't remembered how closely -- often beat-by-beat -- Fokine had set Stravinsky's score. For that reason, and without taking anything from this marvelous and for what at the time was a revolutionary collaboration, "Petrouchka" had a whiff of mustiness about it. It looked and sounded more dated than does "Firebird", for instance. If Stravinsky's collaged Russian folk and carnival music into his score, Fokine followed right on his heels.... More
03/04/10 - danceviewtimes.com
Hushed
"Haieff Divertimento", "Afternoon of a Faun", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Duo, "Apollo" The Suzanne Farrell Ballet Eisenhower Theater The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Washington, DC March 3, 2010 by George Jackson copyright 2010 by George Jackson Like good students dutifully doing homework in the campus library, Suzanne Farrell's dancers went through the motions of four exemplary pieces of 20th Century choreography. Above their heads one could almost see a sign requiring silence - at least on this opening night of the Farrell company's 5-day home season. Even the music, conducted by Emil de Cou, sounded muted. This isn't what one expects from Farrell, who became one of George Balanchine's most exciting dancers and also worked with the theatrically savvy Jerome Robbins and the extravagant Maurice Bejart! For "Apollo", choreographer Balanchine and composer Stravinsky interwove Olympian awe and Delphic irony. Although this staging was the full version with the birth-scene and the final ascent of the stairs, the ballet emerged only in outline. Michael Cook's young god was too polite. More an attentive partner to his three muses, he wasn't their leader. During their solos he stared straight at them, not through them... More
03/04/10 - danceviewtimes.com
A New “La Péri” for the State Ballet Berlin
From the Factory of Choreographic Ready-Mades Vladimir Malakhov produces “La Péri” for the State Ballet Berlin "La Peri" Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden Berlin, Germany February 27, 2010 by Horst Koegler copyright 2010 by Horst Koegler Despite its earlier appearances in dictionaries and encyclopedias (Beaumont, G.B.L. Wilson, Chujoy etc.) the classic ballet entry of “La Péri” is still the one in the “International Encyclopedia of Dance” of 1998. It is also the most concise one, reading: “Théophile Gautier´s scenario for ´La Péri´ was inspired by his attraction to the Orient and dedicated to the feet of his belovd Carlotta Grisi, who danced the Péri, a Persian fairy. She appears to the wealthy and satiated Achmet in an opium dream and he falls in love with her. To test his love, she takes the form of a runaway slave, Leila. Achmet is killed for refusing to surrender her to her owner, but in apotheosis he is seen entering heaven with the Péri. - ´La Péri´ redeemed Grisi´s reputation at a time when she was receiving bad reviews. Jean Coralli provided her with two striking dances: a ´pas du songe´ that culminated in her daring leap from a six-foot high (two... Source