I love going to shows at Joe’s Pub for Dance Now’s Dance-mopolitan’s Commissioned Artist Series. But doing so takes a kind of expertise that I may lack. Did I manage to cut the sticky burrata that topped my little salad while keeping clean the blank paper on which I intended to take notes? Check. Did I really order a second beer? Yes, I did. Did I actually take some notes on top of previous notes … [Read more...]
Juilliard Dancers Predicting Spring
Watching the Juilliard School’s annual Spring Dances, I think of young racehorses turned loose on a course. The Juilliard performers aren’t as young as those ballet dancers who join companies while still in high school; after four years at the school, they’ll graduate with BFAs. However, all that they’ve learned, and are still learning, is on the line in these performances, and often, they’re … [Read more...]
Stephen Petronio: Honoring His Heritage, Moving On
The Stephen Petronio Company performs new and historic works. It has long been something of a tradition that so-called modern dancers forge their own styles, train those who perform their works, and, inevitably, appear as a central power onstage. However, New Yorkers attending Paul Taylor’s recent American Modern Dance season were treated to guest artists performing works by Isadora Duncan … [Read more...]
Making Things Together
The Bebe Miller Company and Susan Rethorst share their processes and a program at New York Live Arts. The Making Room isn’t a dance, it’s a project devised by Bebe Miller that she and fellow choreographer Susan Rethorst have been working on for over a year via conversations both virtual and actual, plus convenings and rehearsals with their collaborating dancers wherever they could find … [Read more...]
Three Women Meet and Make a World
Dana Reitz premieres Latitude at New York Live Arts “Exquisite.” That was what a colleague whispered to me as he emerged from New York Live Arts’ theater into the lobby. Maybe he spoke quietly because Dana Reitz’s trio, Latitude (the third and last presentation of the annual LUMBERYARD in the City festival), had attuned us to every nuance of sound and how it impinges on silence. That single … [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...]
Touched by a Virtual Hand
Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, and Silas Riener collaborate on a video/live performance. So what do you do if you meet a dancer who’s twice your size in every way, and he (or she) reaches out a hand to you? Well you could take off the 3-D viewing glasses that you were given as you entered BAM Harvey to see Tesseract. Or you could just sit back and ponder the enigmas of the virtual stage … [Read more...]
Working Together in Love and in Hate
David Dorfman Dance at BAM Harvey Theater, November 8-11. I came home Wednesday night wanting to crawl into bed with David Dorfman’s Aroundtown, snuggle up to it, and have better dreams. You understand, of course, that I don’t mean that literally; six dancers, four musicians, plus Dorfman and his wife (guest performer Lisa Race) wouldn’t fit in my bed. But the hour-long piece that I’d seen … [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...]