Archives for 2009

I think it's really exciting that American Ballet Theatre chose to do three premieres for their fall season: Bravo! And they even picked choreographers with solid--or better--track records: besides their new and cherished resident choreographer, Alexei Ratmansky, prolific 30something choreographers Benjamin Millepied and Aszure Barton. I've admired works by Barton and Millepied before, but these … [Read more...]

That would be Fall for Dance, which just finished its five-program, two-week run at City Center. Here's my Financial Times review of all but the final program, and here's a teaser for those not so sure they want to click: The all-ages audiences for City Center's Fall for Dance festival are a democracy's dream. People are so buzzed from having snagged the $10 tickets that sell out in a day that … [Read more...]

Emio Greco | PC's [purgatorio] POPOPERA is kind of a mess, but if you love movement --watching it created with the breath, thought about unusually--you should head over to the Joyce this week (through Sunday). And you could probably get in for $10. (The Joyce has "updated their pricing structure"--i.e. succumbed to recession specials. On Tuesday, there were a lot of empty seats and gleeful … [Read more...]

While my colleagues have admitted that something marvelous and strange is going on in Mark Morris's latest works, they've also been diffident. As Alastair Macaulay summed up in the New York Times upon the company's performances at the Mostly Mozart Festival last week, Both [premieres] are peculiar, imaginative, sincere... But [they] are almost impossible to love. I recognize that feeling, … [Read more...]

That's what we proved to be--we critics--when Tulsa Ballet hit town, with the governor, Tulsa mayor, secretary of state and members of the Ballet board in tow. I, at least, was hoping to love them--wouldn't it have been neat to find, far away from any of our dance capitols, that something great was stirring? It happens all the time in the other arts; take, for example, the Flaming Lips, from … [Read more...]