John Heginbotham and Maira Kalman premiere a collaboration at Jacob's Pillow. Do I see an acknowledgement or a warning? My destiny maybe? The seats in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater haven’t paid much attention to me until now, when I’m about to sit in one to watch the world premiere of The Principles of Uncertainty by choreographer-director John Heginbotham and … [Read more...]
‘Tis the Season
Mark Morris's The Hard Nut at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut sets the knowing audience at the Brooklyn Academy laughing in ways that most ballets set to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker do not. But I doubt that ballet aficionados in St Petersburg in 1892 found their eyes moisting up either. This revival of Morris’s music-wise, tradition-flouting version melds human … [Read more...]
Dancing Toward a Future
"New Dances: Edition 2016" showcases Juilliard Dance's four classes of students in new choreography. Every December, the Juilliard School presents its dance students in five public performances of works choreographed for them. Lawrence Rhodes, artistic director of the Juilliard Dance Division, commissions a piece for the members of each class in the school’s BFA program, from the freshmen … [Read more...]
Dancers and Puppets Rebirth the World
Fantasque by John Heginbotham and Amy Trompetter opens Bard Summerscape 2016. The 2016 season of Bard Summerscape (July 1 to August 14) is devoted to the opera composer Giacomo Puccini. Hosted by the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, the concerts, lectures, panels, films and performances that comprise “Puccini and His World” pop up at various sites on the … [Read more...]
Enter, Pursued by History
John Heginbotham premieres his full-evening Chalk and Soot at Jacob's Pillow. No artist can entirely escape history. Unacknowledged, it trails behind him/her. Occasionally it blows around the artist’s ankles, occasioning thoughts. What was that? Where did I get it? Is it something barely remembered or something better chopped off? John Heginbotham doesn’t deny the influences of his years … [Read more...]