Facing the viewer straight-on with a clear-eyed gaze, handsome athletic bodies made large, clear, energetic moves that looked like metaphors for optimism. (Munisteri) The evening’s most unselfconscious and engaging number, Música del Cuerpo (Music of the Body), [had] the dancers providing the audible as well as the visible rhythms. (Medina) Village Voice 06/04/03
American Ballet Theatre; New York City Ballet
NYCB and ABT, America’s top two ballet troupes, have been playing rival spring seasons at Lincoln Center for more than two decades. Time was, the most profound and thrilling art lay with NYCB. Little by little, without Balanchine’s galvanizing presence as chief choreographer and—this should not be underestimated—chief coach, the power of attraction shifted to ABT, with its warmer performing style, its growing complement of male virtuosi, its recent cultivation of tall, fresh, and athletic “American Girl” ballerinas (Gillian Murphy, Michele Wiles), and the occasional dazzling guest star. Overall, ABT’s repertory can’t compete with the stock of Balanchine and Robbins dances held by the NYCB. But with that unique heritage now unevenly performed and glutted and dulled with an excess of Martins and Wheeldon, ABT has slipped into first place. With its ingratiating performances, it’s the company that offers more fun. Village Voice 05/28/03
New York Theatre Ballet: Antony Tudor program
The chamber-sized New York Theatre Ballet is determined not to let the genius of Antony Tudor disappear from view. . . .Tudor is neglected because he doesn’t suit the dominant taste of our time, for grand-scale extravaganza, which degenerates all too easily into flash and trash. Having wrested a uniquely expressive language from ballet’s traditional abstract vocabulary, he offers instead a piercing view of human psychology and a profound sympathy for the workings of the more-often-than-not defeated heart. Village Voice 05/28/03
Home: Longing and Belonging in the Danish “Folk Tale”
According to Denmark’s great Romantic choreographer August Bournonville (1805-1879), the idea of home is a splendid subject for a ballet because it raises the question of self-identity — a profound and eternally fascinating theme that is a staple of art. The most affecting of Bournonville’s works and a linchpin of the Royal Danish Ballet’s repertoire, “A Folk Tale,” created in 1854, explores the fate of a pair of infant girls who have been surreptitiously switched in their cradles. One is an heiress of genteel birth, the other a member of the troll clan that lives under Scandinavia’s hills, emerging at intervals to do mischief to the human society it envies and loathes. Each of the changelings is brought up to a marriageable age in an environment incompatible with her nature; each, without knowing why, is perennially at odds with her surroundings. Each must be restored to her rightful place — that is, her true home — for one of those happy endings in which the nineteenth century could still believe. Dance Insider, Vignettes 09/26/02
American Ballet Theatre’s ad campaign; Dr. Glory van Scott: Tribute to Fred Benjamin
American Ballet Theatre, frantic to sell tickets to its season at the Metropolitan Opera House . . . has embarked on an ad campaign that goes beyond the foolish to the offensive. Benjamin’s Ailey-esque mix of jazz, modern dance, and ballet, used to depict easily recognizable sentiments and situations, is happily studded with unique touches, some witty, some poetic.Village Voice 05/07/03
Richard Daniels; Nicholas Leichter and Claire Byrne
Wee Hours . . . a suite of solos and duets set to piano nocturnes . . . explores the tenderness, the vulnerability, the unreasoning anger, and the haunting fears that possess the soul when it hovers between sleeping and waking. (Daniels) [In] Coalesce . . . the partners form a single organism, with eight limbs but a single mind and heart. (Leichter and Byrne) Village Voice 04/30/03
Darrah Carr Dance
The dancing of the all-female troupe is . . . beguiling: lusty and luscious where appropriate, elsewhere as light, calm, and carefree as the early spring breeze. Village Voice 04/16/03
Tina Croll and Jamie Cunningham: The Horse’s Mouth
One moment . . . disarmed . . . Harold “Stumpy” Cromer vividly recalling hoofing in the Depression while Gemze de Lappe and Gus Solomons jr improvised a duet full of wit, love, and the wisdom of long experience. Village Voice 04/09/03
Ailey II
A whole bunch of people are doing something right: Besides being fierce technicians, the young dancers of Ailey II, under the direction of Sylvia Waters (Aaron Davis Hall, March 14 though 16), infuse their performances with heart and soul. As we’ve seen with their parent company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the approach can transform mediocre choreography. Village Voice 03/24/03
J Mandle Performance: Feast; Alexandra Beller and Mira Kingsley: We Sink as We Run
The look of the thing is handsome, like an ultra-chic magazine animated into a tantalizing (and ravishingly clothed) half-life. (Mandle) [The piece] explores the marvelous human ability to experience disparate emotions simultaneously. Even at the height of tragedy . . . we are assailed and relieved by the ridiculous. (Beller and Kingsley) Village Voice 03/19/03