[this piece originally ran in the L.A. Times] Dancer Benjamin Millepied, 33, comes off as a bit of a highbrow pawn in "Black Swan," Darren Aronofsky's award-winning ballet-horror film. One imagines his character's pale hands, lifting Natalie Portman, as dull and mean and clammy. Off-screen, however, Millepied has the world in a wide, warm embrace. … [Read more...]
The Consolation of Concert Dance
After the multiplying images of Japan’s natural disasters of the last week-plus, is there any way to ram some sort of grounding stick into place? In this glass-walled age where one nation’s disaster is seen and felt by people around the world, how does the imagistic snowball ever stop rolling? How does one hold tragedy’s drowning force and time’s … [Read more...]
In Defense of Black Swan
As a teenage dancer in 1970s Manhattan who took studio class every day and was egged into her first LSD trip with a group of scary young ballet dancers in a claustrophobic apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I may have been overly prepped to relish Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar-nominated “Black Swan.” No other film, (certainly not “Fame,” even … [Read more...]
Cinderella’s Closet
[This piece originally ran on Crosscut.] When a three-quarter-length tulle ballet skirt hits a certain sweet spot on the calf, it evokes one of the most pleasing iconic ratios — think of the lip of a bell encircling its clapper or the curving girth of a willow tree around its trunk. Fill a stage with a perfect storm of these swirling, swaying … [Read more...]
Behind the Scenes at Hanson’s Revolution
"Gloria’s Cause" is choreographer Danya Hanson’s first full-bodied ensemble piece since her 33 Fainting Spells days, and she has packed it more fully, and dug more deeply, than anything she’s done before. If her early works with Gaelen Hanson were like dense short stories, and her later works with Hanson, Peggy Piacenza, and Linus Phillips were … [Read more...]
PNB’s Savory “Director’s Choice”
Every program, really, is Peter Boal’s “Director’s Choice.” It’s now six years into his reign as artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet and today’s audiences are reaping the fruits of his vision and labor. The risks Boal has taken in recent years (challenging his dancers/audiences with everything from live singing in the “West Side Story … [Read more...]
“Coppélia” gets a makeover from the pros
[slideshow] “Coppélia has been called one of the happiest ballets in existence . . . one of the triumphant comic ballets.” With that upbeat line, Pacific Northwest Ballet has been staging a massive advertising campaign for the Seattle premiere of George Balanchine’s 1974 version of “Coppélia.” It seems to be working: Opening night brought out a … [Read more...]
Bruno Beltrão’s Grupo de Rua in “H3″
[First published on Seattle Dances.] I have been waiting all fall for the Seattle debut of Bruno Beltrão’s company, Grupo de Rua. From what I read, I expected to see dark, volcanic Brazilian street dancers performing hip-hop without the accompanying loud, rapping pulse -- to thus feel time stilled and movement writ large. Though hip hop started up … [Read more...]
Bruno Beltrão’s Grupo de Rua
At On the Boards, Fri - Sun Jan 28 - 31, 2010 @ 8pm. This ghostly, washed-out photo of Grupo de Rua, the contemporary Brazilian troupe run by Bruno Beltrão that's performing at On the Boards this weekend, is actually a good indicator of the luminous cinematic quality of H3, a 50-minute dance work for nine men. (Check Seattle Dances soon for a full … [Read more...]
2009: Five Best Moments in Dance
In Seattle and otherwise... 1) "Esplanade" at the UW Meany Hall World Dance series. The dance that I saw as a young child that hooked me forever. It looked a little off-balance with a full-size woman in the jumping-over-bodies role (Lila York, for whom it was created, told me once that it indicated Paul Taylor's belief that the meek shall … [Read more...]