The longer you live, the older you get. Hmm. This not-exactly-apocalyptic statement refers (obliquely) to recollection. When I attended Jacob’s Pillow’s 90th Anniversary Gala last week, memories crowded in. Sixty-eight years ago, I made my debut on the Pillow stage in Taken With Tongues: A Study in Fanaticism by Harriette Ann Gray. Crammed into two cars (or was it three?), we dancers and … [Read more...]
Ballet Up Close and Personal
New York Theatre Ballet's Legends and Visionaries series at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church. The cover photo for New York Theatre Ballet’s season at Danspace Saint Mark’s does not show any of the company’s fine performers. Instead it bears a photo of artistic director Diana Byer and David Vaughan, the dance historian, critic, lecturer, and performer widely known as the author of … [Read more...]
What Will Have Happened in the Woods?
Vim Vigor Dance Company presents the New York premiere of Shannon Gillen's FUTURE PERFECT. The woods are full of shadows and lurking danger. We’ve known that ever since we first heard about Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. Too, anyone sitting in the Baruch Performing Arts Center’s black-box theater who saw Shannon Gillen’s Vim Vigor Dance Company perform her Separati last … [Read more...]
Different Circuses: Elizabeth Streb and Sarah East Johnson
Elizabeth Streb has the mind of a physicist, the heart of a circus performer, and a movie stuntman’s appetite for risk. Upping the ante while balancing all the factors involved seems to be what sustains her. In the 1980s, when she first started showing her work in small downtown black-box theaters or loft spaces, watching her performers topple—straight as boards, faces down—onto a mic’d mattress … [Read more...]