VVoice

Two beautiful solo aerialists soar high overhead like fearless angels–a young woman on a flying trapeze, twisting her pulchritudinous body into amazing configurations, and a daring young man masquerading convincingly as Peter Pan. Village Voice 11/14/05

Vasco Wellencamp’s Canticos Misticos (to blaringly miked excerpts from Handel’s Messiah) contains several semi-abstract images that go right to the heart of the matter, many a pretty moment that confuses sentiment with deep feeling, and an unfortunate desire to cater to the dancers’ inner athlete that just about defines the company’s aesthetic. Village Voice 11/29/05

While some of Adrienne Celeste Fadjo’s dancers outclassed their material, the overall impression was that of work not yet at a professional level. Village Voice 11/23/05

Two New York choreographers whose work is profoundly connected to southeast and eastern Asia paired up for a concert of striking contrasts. Village Voice 11/11/05

Any one of Christopher Wheeldon’s dances to Ligeti would confirm this choreographer’s astute craft and hint at an originality still struggling to emerge from a self-imposed tutelage under great masters. All three pieces proved that more can be less. The thrill of JoAnna Mendl Shaw’s Rules of Engagement lay in the danger one sensed–and the erotic undercurrent present–in the close encounters of beast and human. Village Voice 11/1/05

This splendid documentary film shows how the Ballets Russes evolved into a pair of rival companies that crisscrossed America, seducing both cultural innocents and sophisticates with glamour, beauty, and transcendence. Village Voice 10/18/05

Abetted by the hypnotic effect of Steve Reich’s Drumming, Eliot Feld’s Sir Isaac’s Apples seems to offer a God’s-eye view of a human colony persevering in a faraway landscape. Village Voice 10/14/05

Whittam’s lithe, upbeat dancers look vastly at ease in movement that’s both slinky and bubbly, laced with the warmth and trust necessary to its contact improv tactics; Selva’s Just Walking looks like it wants to be “about” something–postmodern anomie, the vicissitudes of love, Tuscan traditions–but it never makes clear just what. Village Voice 9/19/05

The dancers serve as mere mannequins for ravishing, bizarre outfits featuring transparent plastics, floating gauze, crimson in a dozen dramatic guises, and pearly balloons. Village Voice 9/19/05

Raw depictions of escalating hysteria from La Compagnie de l’Entorse depend almost entirely on Charlotte Schioler’s gift for expressionist dance; The Velocity of Things is proof that postmodern tactics can benefit from an infusion of the color, pulse, and spirit Regina Nejman absorbed in her native Brazil. Village Voice 8/23/05