Alexei Ratmansky brings an 1890 ballet to new life for American Ballet theatre. American Ballet Theatre is no stranger to The Sleeping Beauty. As Ballet Theatre, the new company in town in 1941, the dancers performed Princess Aurora, Anton Dolin’s mash-up of elements from the Prologue and Act III of Marius Petipa’s 1890 masterwork. ABT presented its first full-length version in 1976, its … [Read more...]
Archives for 2015
Moves at LaMaMa
Jane Comfort and Company and Jon Kinzel present new works. Jane Comfort is a master teller of tales—not straight linear narratives, but dances that bristle with content—often social and/or political, often involving spoken text. She has always ingeniously layered and juxtaposed elements and viewpoints that might strike anyone else as incompatible and made them ignite one another. Her 1988 … [Read more...]
Against the Wall
Kimberly Bartosik and Dylan Crossman share a program in a confined space. Kimberly Bartosik, Dylan Crossman, and Melissa Toogood all danced in Merce Cunningham’s company—Bartosik for nine years a few decades ago, Crossman and Toogood in the company that was finally disbanded in 2011. What perhaps should not surprise us is the emotional resonance and implications of drama that imbue the … [Read more...]
Piaf Lives!
Pascal Rioult celebrates the centennial of Edith Piaf's birth in a nightclub setting. To get myself in the mood to write about Pascal Rioult’s Street Singer, a work celebrating what would have been Edith Piaf’s hundredth birthday, I dug up a relic from my family’s past: a 10-inch LP from the 1940s, Chansons Parisiennes (it had cost three dollars) and listened to Piaf sing “La Vie en Rose” (by … [Read more...]
Styles and People Meet and Merge
For a number of years, Cherylyn Lavagnino has been working to bring together in her choreography elements that interest her deeply: the classical vocabulary that she excelled in during her days as a member of the Pennsylvania Ballet and that she teaches at NYU-Tisch School of the Arts; the modern dance that she also trained in and performed; and her feelings about society and political unrest. … [Read more...]
Keeping a Heritage Alive
American Ballet Theatre opens its Lincoln Center season with one-act masterworks from its repertory. When watching the classics of 19th-century and early 20th-century ballet, it’s wise not to ask too many questions. When enjoying Michel Fokine’s 1909 Les Sylphides, for instance, you’re not supposed to wonder what this lone man is doing amid all these women in long, gauzy, white tutus, two … [Read more...]
From Denmark to New York
The New York City Ballet presents an evening of ballets by August Bournonville. In 1930, the year following the death of Serge Diaghilev and the dissolution of his company, Les Ballets Russes, its dancers and choreographers roamed Europe in search of jobs. After a stint in London, George Balanchine found work in Copenhagen as a guest choreographer for the Royal Danish Ballet, where he set … [Read more...]
You Read It Here
DANCENOW presents Mark Dendy's NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place in Joe's Pub. The very small stage at Joe’s Pub is bursting with people, and I’m not talking about the eight real performers. I mean the many others they personify and the many they refer to in the interpenetrating layers of Mark Dendy’s NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place, a DANCENOW commission. Leslie Cuyjet, for example, appears as a real … [Read more...]
King’s Champions
Alonzo King Lines Ballet at the Joyce Theater, May 5 through 10. The dancers of the San Francisco based Alonzo King Lines Ballet may resemble us, but they look more like members of another, related species—highly evolved physically, although not always contented with their state. The eleven who perform three works by King in the company’s season at the Joyce are superbly trained ballet … [Read more...]
A Union of Four Unalikes
Patricia Noworol Dance Theater performs at New York Live Arts. After I had seen Patricia Noworol’s ?Culture in 2013, when it was performed at St. Mark’s church, I wrote that the piece meshed “scrupulous designs with brashness, virtuosity, colloquial manners, outrage, and satiric political incorrectness.” The situation was volatile: Noworol, a violently skillful woman with a mane of blond … [Read more...]