Sasha Waltz & Guests comes from Berlin to BAM. The title of Sasha Waltz’s Kreatur is German for “creature,” since Berlin is where her company is based. At some point during the performance of the piece by Sasha Waltz & Guests at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House, I began to wonder whether the singular noun might allude to one feverish entity, with the … [Read more...]
Archives for 2018
Hunger Appeased? Maybe Not
Kimberly Bartosik/daela premieres I hunger for you at Lumberyard. Lumberyard first appeared in Maryland in 2011, providing residencies for dance artists who were preparing new work. It resurfaced this past summer in stunning new quarters in Catskill, New York as a center for performances and film showings and opened its inaugural season at the end of September. On October 12 and 13, … [Read more...]
Together in a Shrinking Space
Lucy Guerin Inc performs Guerin's Split at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, October 13 through 15. Some European and American choreographers focus primarily on illuminating music, creating light-hearted romps, or re-envisioning beauty and nobility in tragedy (think Giselle, think Odette). However, impelled in part by Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and their contemporaries, others have probed … [Read more...]
De Keersmaeker and Bach Shake Hands
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's The Six Brandenburg Concertos at Park Avenue Armory, October 1 through 7. In 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach, then thirty-six years of age, sent the Margrave of Brandenburg some concertos that he had composed with the following message: “Your Highness deigned to honor me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my Composition: I have in accordance with … [Read more...]
The New York City Ballet Enters a New Era
The New York City Ballet presents its annual Fall Gala The crowd attending the New York City Ballet’s Gala on September 27th was certainly elegantly dressed (sometime daringly so: two men eschewed tuxes and appeared in floral-print suits). During the pre-performance performance of sipping drinks and snagging hors d’oeuvres, you had to be alert to the possibility of stepping on filmy trains. … [Read more...]
Paul Taylor (1930-2018)
When Paul Taylor died of renal failure on Wednesday, August 29th, and I was coping with that news, I started to think not just of the 140 dances he made during his remarkable career, but of his connection to the great figures of 20th-century dance whose pantheon he joins. As a Juilliard student, he met many of them and appeared during the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in a piece … [Read more...]
Excavate, Reassemble, Create
Netta Yerushalmy premieres her Paramodernities at Jacob's Pillow What? My name listed in the Jacob’s Pillow program among the twenty-four people whom Netta Yerushalmy was gracious enough to thank for the “insights” they contributed to her Paramodernities? Quick search through my e-mail. Yes, in 2013, Yerushalmy (who had been a student in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts when I was on its … [Read more...]
Happy Hours Aren’t Always Happy
Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass perform Happy Hour at Jacob's Pillow, 7/26-28 and 8/2-4. The first time I saw Monica Bill Barnes’s Happy Hour, it took place in a long, narrow studio at Gibney Dance, 280 Broadway. In that re-purposed old building near City Hall, it was easy to imagine Barnes and Anna Bass—clad in hats, suits, and ties, their hair slicked back into puny buns—coming from … [Read more...]
Make Them Fall, Help Them Stand
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui/Eastman performs at Jacob's Pillow Ten years ago, I began my review of zero degrees, the duet that Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui created and performed with Akram Khan, like this: “The audience leapt to its feet,” noting that I couldn’t remember ever seeing such an eruption before at New York City Center. Now it has happened again. When the curtain came down on Cherkaoui’s 2015 … [Read more...]
A Gala and Denmark in the Berkshires
Members of the Royal Danish Ballet Come to Jacob's Pillow, as it celebrates its 86th anniversary. Art, time, and money can squirm and slip around one another in unexpected ways. This year’s Gala at Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires made some people open their pockets on the spot and made others wish they could. The mood was jovial, and the weather responded with sunshine (perhaps the gods … [Read more...]