Archives for December 2009

I found Reggie Wilson and Andreya Ouamba's dance, at BAM last week, maddening and, perhaps unwittingly, kinda rude. Its nonsensical combination of casualness and overweaning symbolism put pressure on the audience to get the work to cohere while also making us feeling silly for trying. Putting the audience in a bind is always a bad idea, I think, unless it's done with such wit that you have to … [Read more...]

Here is my Alvin Ailey roundup of the season--after watching the three premieres and the 13 "best-of" tidbits and evening in honor of soon-to-retire Ailey artistic-director queen Judith Jamison. I have the usual praise (for the dancers) and complaints (about the repertory) and then a plea all my own, which you will have to click for the whole article to glean. (Please click!  I think my plan … [Read more...]

My Financial Times review of the choreographer's dance with Judith Sanchez Ruiz and a large white cube, going on right now! at the New Museum on the Bowery: It is a truism that visual art favours dispassion, while theatre and dance, being live and peopled, stir up sentiment. But in Replica, by Jonah Bokaer - a luminous Cunningham dancer for eight years (beginning at the tender age of 18) and now a … [Read more...]

When a new director takes over a company that seems to have exhausted its reason for being, of course you hope he will lead it in a brave and bold new direction. That seems to be Eduardo Vilaro's plan, but he hasn't sufficiently taken the measure of his dancers nor made it possible for his elected choreographers to, so the results were decidedly mixed on Tuesday, opening night of the Joyce season, … [Read more...]