O Vertigo Danse of Montreal and the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec perform Ginette Laurin’s La Vie Qui Bat and Steve Reich’s Drumming at Jacob’s Pillow. There are two performances happening simultaneously on the stage of Jacob’s Pillow’s Ted Shawn Theatre, but I can only see one of them and a tantalizing smidgen of the other. The one I can see is Ginette Laurin’s La Vie Qui Bat … [Read more...]
Restless Creature
Wendy Whelan’s “Restless Creature,” duets choreographed by Kyle Abraham, Joshua Beamish, Brian Brooks, and Alejandro Cerrudo. At Jacob’s Pillow, August 14-17. Ballet dancers tend to have short careers onstage. If they retire at around 36 (as they often do), they’ve spent as many years training to dance as they have performing. Some stay in the field as teachers, choreographers, and company … [Read more...]
Two Brits and Mark
The Mark Morris Dance Group and Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Festival performs operas by Benjamin Britten and Henry Purcell. Mark Morris has journeyed into music in other ways beside making dances to compositions he loves. He has conducted orchestras, directed and choreographed operas. Two works presented in Tanglewood’s airy, wooden Seiji Ozawa Hall reveal his sensitivity to music in … [Read more...]
Pacific Rim Get-together
The Asia Pacific Dance Festival in Hawaii and the Prince Lot Hula Festival Flowers everywhere. On trees and the ground beneath them. On shirts. Around necks. And, I like to think, blossoming in the minds of those attending the Asia Pacific Dance Festival at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Co-produced by the University’s Outreach College and the East-West Center Arts Program, the biennial … [Read more...]
Worlds Apart
L-E-V from Israel and Dorrance Dance debut at Jacob’s Pillow, July 24-28. Who are these creatures emerging from smoky dimness? Ghosts? Robots? Ghosts of robots? They can move in tiny jerks or so fluidly that they appear boneless—pale, androgynous, undulating figures assembling for. . .what? Viewed from another perspective, they are the stunning members of L-E-V, a dance company founded … [Read more...]
Again and Again, Never the Same
Brian Brooks Moving Company performs at Jacob’s Pillow, Becket, Massachusetts, July 10-14. A machine repeats its patterned moves over and over; nothing changes unless one of its parts breaks or something gets caught in the works. Human beings may repeat the same movement many times, but to use the word “same” is simply a verbal convenience. Without meaning to, they may emphasize aspects of … [Read more...]
A New Stravinsky Rite; Forget the Virgin
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company collaborates with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company in “A Rite,” presented in the Richard B. Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater, July 6 and 7. 1913 was quite a year, and saying “Happy 100th Anniversary” mightn’t be the most appropriate salutation. Forget such minor irritations as the United States initiating an income tax. Think instead about artists who … [Read more...]
Dancing for the Gods
Shantala Shivalingappa's "Akasha," a program of new Kuchipudi solos, at Jacob's Pillow, July 4 through 7. It was at Jacob’s Pillow in the 1960s that I first saw examples of two dance styles that I’d never heard of: Odissi and Kuchipudi. Indrani, that beneficent performer and promulgator of Indian dance, was giving a master class and had brought with her two male dancers, each of them … [Read more...]
Perilous Journey, Landscape Unknown
"The Painted Bird," a trilogy by Pavel Zuštiak + Palissimo Company, at LaMama Moves! Dance Festival, June 21-30, 2013 Pavel Zuštiak’s The Painted Bird trilogy draws its themes from Jerzy Kosiňski’s much debated novel of that title. Images of flight, concealment, disguise, isolation, displacement, and the vagaries of memory pervade all three parts of this extraordinary work. What does the … [Read more...]
A Lark Ascends
The revived Dance Theatre of Harlem performs at Jacob’s Pillow, June 19 through 23. If a repertory company starts its program with a performance of George Balanchine’s Agon, where can it possibly go from there? Higher? Don’t make me laugh. But whatever follows, you can get a jolt of almost electric pleasure when Dance Theatre of Harlem begins its performance in Jacob’s Pillow’s Ted Shawn … [Read more...]