Because Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has tended to extrapolate badly from its founder's aesthetic and ethos, I forget every year what a strong craftsman Ailey was. Even when he was tired, the work had merit. Revelations is always my first reminder of his craft--and, no, he wasn't tired for that--followed this year by Cry, Night Creatures, and the final section of Three Black Kings. In fact, … [Read more...]

Hmmmm.... It must be something in the air--or in me--that the experimental works this month seemed too much between one thing and another, without ever wresting their own potent identity. They felt insufficiently steeped, like a stew that hasn't sat and simmered long enough for the flavors to blend. With Neil Greenberg's (like a vase), the steps were precise yet coded, private, partial: Neil … [Read more...]

This season we've had contemporary European dance not only at BAM, the usual suspect, but also at the Joyce, with Belgium's Ballets C de la B earlier this month and more recently Cedar Lake, its reputation as purveyor of B-list--or at least green--European choreographers (with a few A-list Israelis in the mix) now solid. I sound typically New Yorker, don't I? Jaded to the point of provinciality. … [Read more...]

With dances that use an academic or codified language, the route to the matter at hand is relatively direct. Not so when not steps, not structure, but method--more intangible, less empirically provable--is the reigning force. In that case, it doesn't do for the critic to isolate effects; they are mere flotsam--analogues. Of course, writers do isolate all the time, with the result that the dance … [Read more...]

We critics have grown rather grouchy about City Center's annual smorgasbord, the Fall for Dance festival--which is exactly like looking a gift horse in the mouth, as those $10 tickets have to be paid for by someone and it's certainly not the audience. The shows--five separate programs, with four distinct works on each-- sustain a huge loss, offset by corporate and state support. My frustration … [Read more...]