VVoice

Where is it written that dancing requires a clear, well-lighted space? (Dancenow/NYC); The Treaders, a female trio of New York-based dancer-choreographers born and initially trained in Japan . . . are all expert performers in the hypersensitive vein that reminds you of creatures sensing their world through quivering antennae. (Treaders in the Snow) Village Voice 09/10/03

At 70, the Spanish dancer Pilar Rioja has a figure women half her age might envy and, more important, a carriage that comes from decades of embodying pride in all its guises: joyous, disdainful, enraged, malevolent, erotic, and undaunted by grief. Village Voice 08/27/03

Nightswimming casts Limón veteran Nina Watt as-of all things-a tree viciously cut down. [The] exquisitely calibrated choreography details the disruption of the thrumming systems that constitute botanical life, while Watt embodies a mute consciousness of the fatal attack-a kind of biological shock and grief-that offered profound ramifications. (Bannon) [The] ambitious new Garden . . . set to traditional Iraqi music . . . does a good job of suggesting an intricate cultural community inhabited by tillers of the soil and odalisques, fiery demons and beneficent goddesses. (Rübsam) Village Voice 07/09/03

[Nikolaj] Hübbe managed to instill in his protégés a command of the [Bournonville] choreography’s unique charms: the calm upper body riding the fleet action of the feet; the space-grabbing leaps with their invisible preparations and pillow-soft landings; the maverick timing; and, no less important, the pervading sense of unquenchable joy. Village Voice 06/25/03

Classical ballet, with its appetite for space and grandeur, calls for opera-house scale. Does that make the concept of chamber ballet a contradiction in terms? Two mini-troupes at the Kaye Playhouse in May argued persuasively that intimacy has its own charms. Village Voice 06/18/03

Since he relocated to New York three years ago, the German-born Johannes Wieland . . . has developed a singular, striking body of work. Concise and abstract, though hinting at mood, situation, and relationships, his dances are visually handsome in a stern Bauhaus style. Their movement is tightly controlled, with ferocious outbursts that read as frustration and rage at the human condition. Village Voice 06/11/03

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

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

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

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