Foot in Mouth

I have always admired choreographer Stephen Petronio, but also have had certain reticences here and there: that the sophisticated bad-boy tone held the choreography back or that Petronio didn't take sufficient advantage of his strong musical propensities. This past Tuesday, however, I was awed: one of those happy experiences where you come out of the theater recognizing with alarm how absorbed you … [Read more...]

A good deal of experimental dance today--as in the Judson Church days--is closer to performance art. It examines its own parameters; the movement may be minimal. And yet choreographers exist in a nearly invisible parallel universe to visual artists. While choreographers and their audiences know what's happening in gallery and museum, the reverse isn't usually true--not on this side of the … [Read more...]

Faye Driscoll's 837 Venice Boulevard, which premiered at Here in the South Village in late 2008, amazed me so thoroughly that it's no surprise her latest, at Dance Theater Workshop a couple of weeks ago, amazed me somewhat less. It hardly had a chance. Still, I remain impressed by how Driscoll harnesses dance and the best experimental theater's story rhythms to expose the seams between social … [Read more...]

So, unlike Movin' Out, which was almost unanimously hailed (though not by me) or the Dylan dancical, which nearly everyone despised (including me), Tharp's third foray on Broadway in the last ten years, Come Fly Away--to a Sinatra medley, with the man singing, inimitably, from the grave and the orchestra live--has divided critics so drastically that the New York Times staged a contretemps between … [Read more...]

Every couple of months for a few days, English becomes a foreign language. I slip along its periphery: coffee with foam milk in place of latte. If I have time, I can wait for the words to make their way home, but I didn't, in the middle of the night, for this Larry Keigwin review.  I might have said that what gives this comedian choreographer promise--not yet realized, but I believe it will … [Read more...]