Martha Sherman

“Verklärte Nacht”
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York, NY
January 30, 2019

in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s “Verklärte Nacht,” Cynthia Loemij crashed elegantly to the floor in tumble after tumble, a wave of relentless feeling and pain. Set to Arnold Schönberg’s dramatic early string sextet, both the score and the choreography told the story in Richard Dehmel’s 19C poem about love and forgiveness. With a crisp and beautifully danced duet, De Keersmaeker, like Schönberg,

“The Call,” “Shelter,” “In/Side ” “Revelations”
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
New York, NY
December 4, 2018

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continued its long-running tradition of beautifully choreographed and danced gems, with the addition of an homage to its founder. Ronald K. Brown’s “The Call,” premiering at Ailey’s winter season at New York City Center, was a soulful addition to a program that packed power from beginning to end — what Brown called

“Minimalism and Me,” “Eight Jelly Rolls,”
Twyla Tharp Dance
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
November 15, 2018

In a charming two-part evening at the Joyce Theater, Twyla Tharp has joined the parade of excellent retrospectives of post-modern giants who are being heralded at MoMA’s current Judson Dance exhibition. Although she took a turn at Judson, Tharp’s path was different than the Judson group (including Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Trisha Brown and others,) but, like them, she

“I hunger for you”
Kimberly Bartosik/daela
BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
Brooklyn, NY
November 3, 2018

Like the zone inhabited by whirling dervishes, Kimberly Bartosik’s passionate “I hunger for you” reaches for moments of mystical power through relentless motion. In its New York premiere in the capacious black box of BAM Fisher, her work for five dancers (plus a brief observer) offers passion and intensity that often finds that ecstatic zone; even the act of reaching offers many of

“Pitkin Grove”
Beth Gill
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
October 4, 2018

Beth Gill is in no hurry. She has lots to say, but the audience must step up and choose to join her in the complex performance she creates. The world premiere of her latest work, “Pitkin Grove,” has been set on the Joyce’s temporary Quadrille stage; it’s a delicate assemblage, where all the players, boldly color-coded, play their not-quite-solo parts with different energies,

“Four Quartets” 
Pam Tanowitz
The Fisher Center at Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
July 7, 2018 

What comes first, the words or the movement? In a powerful tribute to the skills of choreographer Pam Tanowitz and her troupe, their dance to T.S.Eliot’s masterwork “Four Quartets” feels like a true partnership. In its world premiere at Bard College’s Fisher Center, her dancers interpreted “Four Quartets” Eliot’s elegiac meditation on time, to the poem

“Wash/A Variety Show”
Vicky Shick
West End Theatre
New York, NY
May 12, 2018

I remember when a “variety show” was a jumble of generally mediocre acts crammed together in a program that tried to provide a little something for everyone. Vicky Shick’s wryly titled “Wash/A Variety Show” offers quite an alternative – a mash-up of marvelous solos and duets, lightly connected by an interlocked cast and Shick’s magical touch. Shick filled the cozy West End

“Ekstasis,” “Panorama,” “Histoire,” “The Rite of Spring”
Martha Graham Dance Company
City Center, New York, NY
April 14, 2018

In an elegant program that started at the most essential, then wove into the complex, the Martha Graham Company offered a program that was pure Martha. All of the works, from the 1933 solo, “Ekstasis,” to Graham’s mature 1984 “The Rite of Spring,” offered Graham’s signature body geometry, the breath, fists, and sweeping kicks creating scenes and stories of

“Signals,” “Wild Wild World,” “Hardness 10”
Stephen Petronio Company
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
March 20, 2018

It is all right there. Stephen Petronio is in the middle of a five-year project (maybe longer,) “Bloodlines,” in which he remounts and reflects on the influence of the great choreographers who have been his mentors and inspirations. In the current offering, the link is beautifully clear to the stunning genetic material that he gleaned from Merce Cunningham, whose “Signals” (1970) opened

“One of Sixty-Five Thousand Gestures/NEW BODIES”
Jodi Melnick
Guggenheim Works & Process
New York, NY
January 15, 2018

In a new work by Jodi Melnick, three traditionally trained ballet stars come face-to-face with this iconoclastic choreo- grapher, and it is, truly, as if they were coming into their eponymous “NEW BODIES.” Dance writer (and now occasional curator) Claudia LaRocco came up with an intriguing programming idea for a 2017 Danspace Project Platform when she matched pairs

“Tesseract”
Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, Silas Riener
BAM Harvey Theater
Brooklyn, NY
December 13, 2017

It opened with a starry sky, viewed through 3-D glasses. In their mixed media dance and film extravaganza, dancer/choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener partnered with videographer/director Charles Atlas for a two-act performance, the first half: a rollicking 3-D dance video, the second half: a live dance performance with simultaneous video shadowing. Not surprisingly, the dancers – some schooled, as Mitchell