Women dancers at New York City Ballet are losing their heads … [Read more...]
Archives for 2009
Heads and Eyes
I was just going to write about the lost heads and clichéd eyes of our women ballet dancers when The New Yorker's Joan Acocella came out with a Critic's Notebook, "All Smiles," that begins, An epidemic of flirtiness has attacked our ballet companies. The dancers woo us, grin at us, give us saucy looks. "I'm going to do something special," they say. Then they do it. Then they cock an eye at us as … [Read more...]
January 30:
Best--or longest--essays on Foot this year (according to me) … [Read more...]
An encore presentation (aka a rerun) of about a dozen Foot pieces from 2008
Because I won't have much new to offer in the next few weeks. u A feature and exclusive interviews with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, and Damian Woetzel on Jerome Robbins (April). u Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan's "Zero Degrees"--a powerfully helpless melancholy in the face of a senselessly violent world (April). u War dances and a new inertia (May). u Julian Barnett's "Sound … [Read more...]
January 21:
Miami City Ballet at City Center--why you might want to go … [Read more...]
Miami City Ballet in town
As I seem to have fallen into the mode of recommending (I'll fall out as soon as I can), let me recommend to you Edward Villella's lovely, engrossing Miami City Ballet, in Manhattan for the first time after decades in the far reaches of Long Island and New Jersey. (The last time MCB was nearby, the dances' magic competed with canned banter on all sides of me, as if my neighbors had dragged … [Read more...]
Saturday, January 17:
The Jerome Robbins PBS documentary (to a small screen near you on Feb. 18) is great! … [Read more...]
Catch the Jerome Robbins documentary Feb. 18 on PBS
So, I made it to the big-screen screening (where, from the fourth row, all the talking heads were enormous) at the Dance on Camera festival last night and can attest to the doc's excellence. I've read both authorized biographies--the first and more dance-specific by Deborah Jowitt, the second, more biographically oriented, by Amanda Vaill, both wonderful--and certainly understand that Jerome … [Read more...]
Monday January 12:
Dance on Camera preview of Robbins documentary … [Read more...]
Long lost topic: Dance on camera
About two and a half years ago, we were wondering here on Foot why opera is more likely to generate a buzz than ballet, its dance equivalent. Inevitably we ended up talking about dance recordings and whether they could ever be as good as opera recordings, with some of us feeling they couldn't and others of us feeling they basically could and a third feeling that if they were to succeed, it would … [Read more...]