The Tiffany Mills Company presents two new works at BAM Fishman. Remember when dancers rarely talked onstage? No? Then you’re probably still in your twenties. Beginning in the 1980s, when narrative and emotion began to slip back into contemporary American dance and knock its movement-and-form-only stance askew, some choreographers tackled stories that couldn’t be told through dancing … [Read more...]
Archives for 2013
Playing Hard, Game Unknown
Gallim Dance at BAM Fisher, May 21-26, 2013 What does “blush” convey to you? A person becomingly embarrassed? A person ashamed? The reddening sky of dawn? If it were not for the association of “flush” with toilets and wealth, I’d consider it an apter title than Blush for Andrea Miller’s revised 2009 dance. The six go-for-broke members of her Gallim Dance do indeed turn red in the face … [Read more...]
Dancing Love and Love of Dancing
American Ballet Theatre’s new production of Frederick Ashton’s “A Month in the Country” on a program with Mark Morris’s “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes” and George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.” Metropolitan Opera House, May 21-23. Frederick Ashton’s A Month in the Country distills the five acts of Ivan Turgenev’s eponymous play and the passage of several weeks into 40 minutes of dancing, … [Read more...]
The Attraction of Opposites
Pam Tanowitz's The Spectators at New York Live Arts, May 15 through 18; Bill Young and Colleen Thomas's A Place in France at 100 Grand Street, May 16 through 19. Pam Tanowitz’s new The Spectators at New York Live Arts is so clean you could eat off it. Pristine patterns control the six dancers she deploys, and no move they make is blurred or loose. One of Tanowitz’s talents is making cool … [Read more...]
From Tunis to Ithaca
Jonah Bokaer performs his The Ulysses Syndrome with his father, Tsvi Bokaer, May 9 and 10, during the French Institute's World Nomads Festival. Ithaca is the island in the Ionian sea that Odysseus (aka Ulysses) left when he armed himself for the Trojan War, and it’s the place he returned to after ten postwar years of wandering. Ithaca, New York, is the city where Tsvi Bokaer finally settled … [Read more...]
All American
New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center, April 30 through June 9 In the Spring of 1988, the New York City Ballet put on an American Music Festival. George Balanchine had been dead for five years, and the two Ballet Masters in Chief, Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins, commissioned enough new ballets to keep dancers, guest choreographers, and resident choreographers rushing in and out of the … [Read more...]
A Change in the Wind
Tamar Rogoff’s Summer’s Different in La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart’s Theater, April 24 through May 12 A family’s summer day on the beach, what could be finer? Of course, someone might get sunburned, someone might drop her hot dog in the sand, someone might swim out a little too far. There could be bickering. Tears saltier than usual could be shed. But still. . .a cloudless sky, blue waves. … [Read more...]
Awaken to Life!
Stephen Petronio Company at the Joyce Theater, April 30 through May 5, 2013 Over a hundred black-clad members of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City form a V around the corner of the Joyce Theater—some on 19th Street, some on 8th Avenue; over a hundred pairs of eyes focus on composer Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott), who, shielded by a parasol, is playing guitar alongside trumpeter C.J. … [Read more...]
Journeying Along Interior Trails
Souleyman Badolo and Cynthia Oliver at New York Live Arts, April 25 through 27 At one point in Suleymane Badolo’s new solo, Barack, on the opening night of his season at New York Live Arts, Badolo dances with his back to the audience, clapping his hands together vigorously; when he stops, from the audience comes a small-voiced echo of his action (maybe two pairs of hands clapping) that … [Read more...]
Both Sides Now
Vicky Shick’s Everything You See. Presented by Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, April 18 through 20. Imagine a richly busy world in which everyone is mostly at peace with everyone else, and all are serious about their work. Then think about that work. It’s unusual. The inhabitants swing their bodies and limbs into big, sweeping movements, but their patterns also incorporate small, … [Read more...]