George Jackson

“Défilé" “Reverence”, “Delusional Beauty”, “Racecar”
The Washington Ballet’s Next Steps Program
Harman Hall
Washington, DC
October 24, 2019

The next steps danced are not necessarily new ones. Instead, they can stir memories. This program began with silent video clips of dance and short messages before the company’s director, Julie Kent, stepped in front of  the curtains to welcome her audience. The former ballerina looked trim on high platform shoes with tight, light trousers and a top that

“Paquita”
The Mariinsky Ballet
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
October 8 and 10, 2019

The tastes and skills for this 2017 production of the ballet “Paquita” span several centuries. The story derives from the writings of Spain’s Miguel Cervantez (1547 – 1616). The first dance version premiered 1846 in Paris, choreographed by Joseph Mazilier to music by Edouard Deldevez. The work is named for its principal character: Paquita appears to be a

“Beach Birds”, “BIPED”
Merce Cunningham @ 100
Compagnie Centre National de Danse Contemporaine – Angers
Eisenhower Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
October 3, 2019

To celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of New York choreo-grapher Merce Cunningham (1919 - 2009), the Kennedy Center imported a contemporary dance company from Angers, France. The troupe is directed by Robert Swinston, a Juilliard School graduate who danced for Martha Graham, Kazuko Hirabayashi, José Limón 

Dance Day at The Reach Festival
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
September 21, 2019

An incredible amount of dance was performed in Kennedy Center’s formal and improvised spaces on Dance Day, September 21. From morning into the night it drew a huge audience. I was part of the crowd in the main building’s corridors and theaters, on the terrace overlooking the Potomac River and on the campus’ extension south with  its three blunt, new

“Swan Lake”
American Ballet Theatre
Filene Center, Wolf Trap Park
Vienna, Virginia
July 13, 2019

Of the characters in “Swan Lake”, Odette and Odile fascinate because they are opposites as well as being similar. Suffering has given Odette her allure. Force is Odile’s magnet. However, Siegfried is just a routine prince. Perhaps he has a domineering mother, yet he both manages the courtiers and mixes with them to some extent. Like all princes who have just come of age,

“Journey”, “Rondo Ma Non Troppo”,
“Prufrock”, “Extremely Close”, “Songs by Cole”
and music by Chris Rogerson and Zoltan Kodaly
Chamber Dance Project
Harman Hall
Washington, DC
June 22, 2019 evening

The format chosen by artistic director Diane Coburn Bruning for Chamber Project’s summer program was an alternation of dance and music-only selections. All the pieces but one were short and for the one long number, the last, there was both dancing and just-concertizing. This format functioned well and, likely,

“Classically Dope” by Wavelengths Winds et alia;
Copland’s “Billy the Kid” Suite and
“From the New World” i.e., Dvorak’s Symphony #9 by
The National Symphony Orchestra
The Anthem
Washington, DC
June 5, 2019

An anthem is a hymn in praise of joy. DC’s huge, fairly new venue for the performing arts – The Anthem – is being called a concert hall. It opened on The Wharf, the city’s renovated Southwest waterfront, in October 2017 and is being

“Valse Fantaisie”, “Change”,
“Passage”, “Dougla”
Dance Theatre of Harlem
Ballet Across America
Opera House,
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
May 28, 2019

This time Ballet Across America spanned just the nation’s East Coast, but from New York to Florida. Opening night was all Dance Theatre of Harlem’s. It started with company director Virginia Johnson, chic in a sharply cut suit, stepping in front of the curtains and briefly addressing the audience. Johnson

"Exuberant Fanfare”, “At the Seams”,
“Lissajous” and “Du Vent et des Vages”
Bowen McCauley Dance Company
Terrace Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
May 18, 2019

The entire program was titled “An Awakening”, and without doubt the evening’s choreographers, Lucy Bowen McCauley and Ilana Goldman, displayed the ferment and sensitivity of nascent feelings. The joyous opener, “Exuberant Fanfare” by Bowen McCauley, was very balletic. Bodies were turned-out and limbs were streamlined or smoothly

Dance Icons’ Thesis Concert
Choreography by Rachael Alexandra,
Alicia E. Diaz de Leon, Jess Hoversen,
Naomi Lang, Mariah Lopez Solonick,
Paul Lytle and Mecca Mayers
Dance Loft on 14
Washington, DC
May 11, 2019

Music by single composers served the first two dance works on the program. Each of the five following pieces of choreography used several composers, from three to six. Was it any wonder that the first two dances didn’t meander? The opener, Paul Lytle’s “Trilemma”

“Tracings”
Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company
Kogod Courtyard
National Portrait Gallery
Washington, DC
May 4, 2019

This time Dana Tai Soon Burgess didn’t make a new dance but restaged his 2003 work. If memory serves, it emerged with fresh bravura and with a lyric thrust from start to stop. Apparently the current version, with a duration of 43 minutes, is a bit shorter than the original that was shown at Kennedy Center. Aspects of ritual and of a

“The Legacy of The New Dance Group”
Choreography by Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow and Talley Beatty
Coolidge Auditorium
The Library of Congress
Washington, DC
April 19, 2019

Seldom anymore do we get to see live performances of historic modern dance or, as it is called with loving irony, of “old modern”. Once upon a time, it constituted a successful revolution, or at least a fashion. That was from the 1920s into the 1960s, and not only in America.