Tere O'Connor's Bleed, premiering on BAM's Next Wave Festival, is built on the bones of three previous works. Writing about Tere O’Connor’s work is always a challenge (he himself does it very well). Watching his marvelous new Bleed in the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Fishman Space is akin to recalling a night of dreaming. In it, as in dreams, events pour into one another, places morph into … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2013
Pina Bausch Returns to Juilliard
Juilliard students appear in premieres by Takehiro Ueyama, Brian Brooks, and Darrell Grand Moultrie, plus a reconstruction of a work by Pina Bausch. Every winter, the Juilliard School presents its dance students in four new works. All its dance students. Although—since some pieces are double cast—you might have to attend two performances to see every single talented dancer on stage. This … [Read more...]
Just What Are We Celebrating?
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premieres Aszure Barton's Lift at City Center. Any choreographer invited to make a piece for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater must come to the first rehearsal with both elation and trepidation. The Ailey dancers are like racehorses—sleek, swift, eager, ablaze with temperament. What can you feed them? How do you groom them? Are you up to the … [Read more...]
Fire Burning at Both Ends
Donna Uchizono Company premieres Fire Underground at New York Live Arts. The title of Donna Uchizono’s harrowing new work is Fire Underground. The words evoke flames smoldering, unable to break through. Fire under the skin. Fire heating up the brain. Anger that has to be restrained. Uchizono makes no secret of the dance’s source. She spent twelve years adopting a child in Nepal and … [Read more...]