DD Dorvillier adds a new work to her month-long reassessment of her history in dance. DD Dorvillier always seems, in her choreographic projects, to be testing something. Perhaps it’s the audience’s perception of dance, or her own. She probes into the interactions of light and darkness, into the effect of space on sound vibrations, into the interference of objects on live dancers, and more. … [Read more...]
Archives for 2014
Blurring Thresholds
John Jasperse brings diverse sources and his own history into a bold new work at New York Live Arts, May 28 through 31. John Jasperse is not the kind of choreographer who draws a movement style out of his own body and sensibility and sticks with it. He reacts to ideas floating around in the culture, queries his own practice, tries something he hasn’t tried before. Often the movement he … [Read more...]
Please Do It Again
DD Dorvillier draws fragments from past works, strips them down, and re-situates them. On the wooden floor of St. Mark’s Church close to the 10th Street end of the space, a man and a woman sit close together, facing each other (right leg bent in front, left leg bent behind), They’re both wearing plain gray tee-shirts and shorts. It’s noon on the first Wednesday of DD Dorvillier’s reframed … [Read more...]
Balanchine and Massine at American Ballet Theatre
ABT's spring season at the Met offers two Balanchine ballets and one by Massine. In November, 1947, just before a small, stylish company named Ballet Society became the New York City Ballet, its balletmaster, George Balanchine, bestowed a gift on another New York-based company, Ballet Theatre. Theme and Variations, set to the “Theme and Variations” movement from Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3 … [Read more...]
Where Do You Plan To Travel?
Yoshiko Chuma and Rebecca Lazier share a program at LaMama. Yoshiko Chuma’s program note for her π=3.14…HOW TO DELIVER AN AFGHAN HAT Endless Peripheral Border Cont… (part of the 2014 LaMama Moves Festival) begins with these words; ‘War is like a sick child. You either keep doing your job or not.” She should know. Growing up in Japan after World War II in a culture still shuddering its … [Read more...]
Back in ’64, Movin’ On
The New York City Ballet honors its theater with a gala and a premiere. On April 24, 1964, I wasn’t sitting in one of the red plush seats shown above, cheering New York City Ballet’s inaugural performance in Lincoln Center’s recently completed New York State Theater. However, occupying a seat in that same theater on May 8, 2014, when the company celebrated its 50th anniversary in the … [Read more...]
Walk, Do Not Dance!
The Lyon Opera Ballet brings Christian Rizzo's ni fleurs, ni ford-mustang to BAM. The stage lights are dimming slowly— so slowly that we spectators can barely pin down the moment when we can no longer see the clump of seven dancers, covered head to toe in gleaming black outfits, wriggling and jouncing around. Nor can we be sure when the lights are truly out. There’s a nervous pause before … [Read more...]
The New in the Old, The Old in the New
The Limon Dance Company performs at the Joyce; Miki Orihara debuts a solo program. It was several days after I saw the Limón Dance Company at the Joyce Theater that I suddenly discerned subtle connections among the four works on the program that artistic director Carla Maxwell put together for the company’s 68th anniversary—two by company founder José Limón (1908-1972) and two new works, … [Read more...]
À LA FRANÇAIS AND THEN SOME
DANSE: A French-American Festival of Performance and Ideas opens with a work by Alain Buffard. The French in America! I do not speak of the emigrating 17th-century Huguenots, or of Alexis de Tocqueville, who journeyed around the U.S. in the 19th-century and said wise things about it. Je ne parle pas de croissants, ni de boeuf bourgignon. Dior? Pouf! Bidets? They never caught on. No, I … [Read more...]
Writing on Air
Shen Wei Dance Arts presents Map at Judson Church, April 29 through May 4 In Judson Church’s open, lofty space, Shen Wei’s restaging of his 2005 Map looks and feels far more three-dimensional than the version that premiered at Lincoln Center on a proscenium stage. The Judson spectators sit on four sides of the large arena, some of them on the small, high stage made to hold the altar. The … [Read more...]