I found Reggie Wilson and Andreya Ouamba's dance, at BAM last week, maddening and, perhaps unwittingly, kinda rude. Its nonsensical combination of casualness and overweaning symbolism put pressure on the audience to get the work to cohere while also making us feeling silly for trying. Putting the audience in a bind is always a bad idea, I think, unless it's done with such wit that you have to … [Read more...]

Here is my Alvin Ailey roundup of the season--after watching the three premieres and the 13 "best-of" tidbits and evening in honor of soon-to-retire Ailey artistic-director queen Judith Jamison. I have the usual praise (for the dancers) and complaints (about the repertory) and then a plea all my own, which you will have to click for the whole article to glean. (Please click!  I think my plan … [Read more...]

My Financial Times review of the choreographer's dance with Judith Sanchez Ruiz and a large white cube, going on right now! at the New Museum on the Bowery: It is a truism that visual art favours dispassion, while theatre and dance, being live and peopled, stir up sentiment. But in Replica, by Jonah Bokaer - a luminous Cunningham dancer for eight years (beginning at the tender age of 18) and now a … [Read more...]

When a new director takes over a company that seems to have exhausted its reason for being, of course you hope he will lead it in a brave and bold new direction. That seems to be Eduardo Vilaro's plan, but he hasn't sufficiently taken the measure of his dancers nor made it possible for his elected choreographers to, so the results were decidedly mixed on Tuesday, opening night of the Joyce season, … [Read more...]

I ask on the occasion of Wally Cardona's Really Real at BAM through tonight, which does what you're always hoping for in a work--develop its ideas via its structure. Here, he's exploring individuation, isolation, or "falling free," as Kierkegaard, Really Real's reigning philosopher, puts it. Cardona divides each thing from each thing, including us from an emotional investment in the work. I didn't … [Read more...]

Frederick Wiseman's La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet--soon it will be all up and down the West Coast and in select cities in other parts of the country. Its stay at the Film Forum here in New York has been extended for at least another two weeks. Agnès Letestu and Mathieu Ganio rehearse Genus, choreographed by Wayne McGregor. Photo courtesy of Zipporah Films and Film Forum. Here is a chunk of my … [Read more...]

Treat yourself, if you're so lucky: you only have till Saturday, and Wednesday, the house was packed. Some critics have been ambivalent--Gia Kourlas in the NY Times and Kathleen O'Connor at Danceviewtimes. I was enthralled, and set free for flashes of insight, from blast off to lights out. O'Connor is a brilliant choreographer, but his Mommy and Baby dances (2006 and 2004, respectively) … [Read more...]

Karole Armitage is a choreographer who misses more than she hits, but even that bumpy track record didn't prepare me for Itutu, playing BAM for a mercifully short run this week. Here are the first few paragraphs of my Financial Times review, out tomorrow: If cultural appropriation didn't already have a bad name, Karole Armitage's Itutu (until Saturday) would give it one. That the choreographer … [Read more...]

Mudan 175/39 by Garth Fagan. Photo by Paula Summit.I don't think this year's Joyce season is the best showing of Fagan's work. There's only one premiere--the lovely Mudan--but even that wouldn't be a problem if the rep didn't also fall on the minimalist end of the Fagan scale. Still, I admire the Rochester choreographer's aim and method enough to not much mind if one year is less revelatory than … [Read more...]

I asked my friend and Foot colleague Paul Parish whether I could paste some of his review last week of Bill T. Jones's and Joe Goode's latest shows--Jones's is the big Lincoln fete we New Yorkers will be getting some side dishes from later this month at the Joyce--and he said, yes, please. There's all sorts of observations Paul makes that have me starting up with excitement--the unusual way … [Read more...]