21st-century works in The New York City Ballet's Winter season (January 23-March 4) A subtle artistic schism exists for dancers in the New York City Ballet. None of them knew its co-founder Balanchine. They hadn’t taken his classes; they hadn’t watched him choreograph new ballets or lent him their bodies to use as inspiration and building blocks. If they experienced ballets by his later … [Read more...]
Archives for January 2018
A Japanese Company Brings a Forest to New York
Kei Takei's Moving Earth Orient Sphere performs at New York Live Arts, January 25-27. In 1969, New Yorkers hadn’t seen anything resembling the dances Kei Takei was beginning to make. Like the choreographers who’d been associated with Judson Church earlier in the 1960s (Yvonne Rainer, David Gordon, Steve Paxton et al), she broke the implicit rules of western dance. But in her hands, … [Read more...]
What Makes a Body Seem New?
The Guggenheim Museum's Works & Process series presents two works by Jodi Melnick on January 14th and 15th. I didn’t try to count the gestures in One of Sixty-Five Thousand Gestures, a 2012 collaboration between Trisha Brown and Jodi Melnick. Nor did I think about the “one” of the title while Melnick was dancing alone on the small stage of the Guggenheim Museum’s Peter B. Sharp Theater … [Read more...]
Tracking Everyday Mysteries
RoseAnne Spradlin's X at New York Live Arts, January 13 and 14. Is this dance I’m looking at boring? More graciously put: am I bored? Etymology kicks in: do I feel as if something is being bored into my brain? I don’t deal with this issue while watching RoseAnne Spradlin’s compelling X at New York Live Arts. Well, maybe I do, briefly, since I notice that, near the end, I am uncrossing and … [Read more...]