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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

(Corrected version: I was looking at a foreshortened calendar when I wrote out my recommendations--what a dummy! [Or at least tired to the point of dumbness.] I've added to the second paragraph a few programs I missed the first time out. New part in bold.) Fifty of them for each performance, starting now and continuing through March 1. I can't tell you how rare orchestra seats at this price are. … [Read more...]

Dear Reader, I hope you are enjoying your holidays. I hope that if you went home, you came back before your family forgot they invited you; that if you stayed put for a "quiet" holiday, you didn't suddenly feel bereft; that if you spent the long weekend partying like it's 1999 (it's something else), the headaches you woke up to weren't too awful. I won't have a whole lot for you in the next … [Read more...]

But first, Benjamin Millepied. The increasingly sought-after choreographer (and City Ballet principal) can make inventively odd dances, often when he's working in a minimalist mode. His 2005 quartet for men, "Circular Motion," at Fall for Dance, and his "Double Aria," at the 2005 New York City Ballet fall gala, transferred the workmanly, incremental procedures of Steve Reich or early Trisha Brown … [Read more...]

I once had dinner with a cinematographer. "There's a song about you!" I exclaimed. "It goes, I AM a cin-e-muuh-TAW-grapher...." The cinematographer smiled: "Isn't it the only song about us?" Yeah, probably. Which is one reason it works so well as prologue to Faye Driscoll's "837 Venice Blvd," the dance-drama that played at Here Arts Center in the South Village for ten days earlier this … [Read more...]

If you've been reading Foot this week, you know I was dismayed to find that the "Dance" that "Reading Dance" offered wasn't as comprehensive or as timely as an anthology of this size--1,300-odd pages--would warrant. But on second thought (says our lady of second thoughts), if you just disregard the title and reorganize the contents, there turns out to be a good book inside the dubious … [Read more...]