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...]
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...]
Building Community, Skin Against Skin
Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, working in both Brussels and Berlin, visits NYU Skirball The first time I try to access the website of Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods (based in both Brussels and Berlin), the screen says only “try to explode;” when I enter it again later, it tells me, “you have to embrace accident.” I think I’ll try the second now and save the first until later. Seeing Stuart’s 2015 … [Read more...]
From Cuba with Fervor and Vigor
Some of us may remember Carlos Acosta, when he was appearing with England’s Royal Ballet or, more briefly, as a guest artist with American Ballet Theatre. Princely. Virtuosic. He performed with other major companies as well. But he returned to Cuba, the country where he was born and nurtured. There he established the Carlos Acosta International Dance Foundation and, in 2015, his own company, … [Read more...]
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...]