There are dances I can't even fathom disliking. But I can understand not liking Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat's thoroughly down to earth approach to Mozart's Requiem, the composer's final appeal to God and death. The disconnect between music and steps--pedestrian gestures repeated like musical motifs and Janet Jackson steps so tight they're rubbing against each other the way a cat rubs against … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2008
GO: Puppets, here, there, and on Long Island
...Specifically, Basil Twist's extraordinary "Petrushka" at Lincoln Center next week through April 13 and the Hudson Vagabond Puppets' very sweet Beatrix Potter ballets at Tilles Center in Long Island this Sunday. Here's my Newsday preview: "It's amazing that people relate to a bunch of wood and cloth," marvels puppeteer extraordinaire Basil Twist. "I think as we become more computerized, we … [Read more...]
Macaulay Watch: The chief Times dance critic is getting better (REVISED)
...and not just because he agrees with ME about "King Arthur," though I have to say it's not at all fun writing a negative review of work you generally admire, so I am grateful for the company. Macaulay has settled down, dug in and begun shedding his mannerisms (the self-celebration as moony, sensitive poet, for example, and the sarcasm). He can describe what he's seeing and why it matters in … [Read more...]
Macaulay Watch: The chief Times dance critic is getting better (REVISED Monday)
...and not just because he agrees with ME about "King Arthur," though I have to say it's not at all fun writing a negative review of work you generally admire, so I am grateful for the company. Macaulay has settled down, dug in and begun shedding his mannerisms (the self-celebration as moony, sensitive poet, for example, and the sarcasm). He can describe what he's seeing and why it matters in … [Read more...]
GO? St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre’s “Carmen”
The preview below involved one of those maddening situations where no video of the ballet existed--and I'd never seen the company. I read everything I could find on the troupe (on Nexis, for example, and the ballet boards)--but there wasn't a single review, even, of this particular ballet, which could either be marvelous or a bust. I hate being reduced to a reporter--just reporting what the … [Read more...]
Mark Morris’s “King Arthur”: I didn’t like it.
Morris has made some of my favorite works. But this is not one of them. Here's my review from Newsday: Henry Purcell's 1691 "King Arthur" wasn't ever an opera, exactly. Proud of their theater tradition and suspicious of this Italian business of singing your way through a story, the 17th century English preferred the semi-opera, a play in "blank verse, adorn'd with scenes, machines, songs and … [Read more...]