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...]
From Chicago to Massachusetts
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago appears at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. I first saw Crystal Pite’s choreography by in 2008, when Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (sadly defunct) commissioned her Ten Duets on a Theme of Struggle (performed in rotation by five dancers). The most recent Pite work I wrote about was her 2015 Polaris, one of four works in Sadlers Wells London’s Lincoln Center … [Read more...]
One Composer, Four Choreographers
Dance celebrates the music of Thomas Adès at New York City Center. “His music moves from here to there in a way that is at heart choreographic.” Music critic and historian James M. Keller wrote those words in a program note for “Thomas Adès: Concentric Paths—Movements in Music,” the Sadler's Wells London’s production of four dances set to Adès scores, an event in Lincoln Center’s White … [Read more...]
Cedar Lake’s Last Stand
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in its final season. The news that Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet was folding came in March. The entries on the company’s Facebook page seethe with shock, sorrow, and profound disappointment from those who cherish Cedar Lake’s dancers. And those dancers were rightly cheered at their farewell performances at BAM. What … [Read more...]
Lie There My Art
I don’t think of myself as purist about Shakespeare. I’m fine with Laurence Olivier inserting a line from Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine into his Henry V film and loved David Gordon’s Dancing Henry V. I’m okay with the 1995 film of Richard III that equates its murderous dynasties with the Third Reich. I relished a years-ago Shakespeare and Company production of Much Ado About Nothing that was … [Read more...]