#QueertheBallet
Adriana Pierce, choreographer
Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill, New York
February 25, 2021
Streaming on Youtube, February 25-March 11
The art form of ballet is overdue for a queering – i.e. expanding its repertoire of meaning beyond the traditional binary codes of gender and sex. Adriana Pierce, an alumna of George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet and Miami City Ballet, went into a recent residency with a clear goal in mind: “to create a duet for two women
LaMama Moves/Online
Tamar Rogoff with Merri Milwe
"Wonder About Merri"
Kevin Augustine/Lone Wolf Tribe
"Body Concert"
Tamar Rogoff with Mei Yamanaka
"The Yamanakas at Home"
January 27, 2021
It's not that often that three disparate dance pieces fit together so well that they seem to be subtly referring and commenting on each other – but last night's trio of experiments from LaMama seemed to have been made with each other in mind. The bookends were
LaMama Moves/Online
Annabella Lenzu & Kari Hoaas
January 20, 2021
Inauguration Day and the Pandemic both played into the hands of artists at LaMama's annual festival of dance, this year on video instead of downtown in New York. Norwegian choreographer Kari Hoaas and Argentine-American Annabella Lenzu had to adapt work originally meant for LaMama's theater space. And while their creative solutions narrowed the scope of their pieces, they may also have sharpened their focus.
"Plastic Harvest"
Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance
The Center at West Park, New York
Streamed Live December 15, 2020
In the early 1960s, choreographer Murray Louis took a ride up the escalator at Macy’s, the world’s largest store.
''I looked at rooms and rooms … waves of coats and shirts,'' he told the New York Times. ''I thought, 'Who buys this?' And suddenly I had an image of excess as a theme.
Lori Belilove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Company
Lori Belilove, Artistic Director
Hayley Rose, Emily D'Angelo, Faith Kimberling, Caroline Yamada
Untermyer Gardens, Yonkers NY
September 26, 2020
A flock of Monarch butterflies –- stopping for the night in the Hudson Valley on their way to Mexico – greeted early arrivals Saturday in Untermyer Park and Gardens, high above the river in Yonkers. Their visit was unscheduled, but no more an accident than the gust of wind which
"The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood"
Written and Directed by Suguru Yamamoto
Wataru Kitao, Performer
Japan Society, New York
January 10, 2020
Mayday! Mayday! Is a cry that comes up repeatedly in Suguru Yamamoto’s dance/drama “The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood.” It means “help me” in French, but it seems to fall on deaf ears in Tokyo, the setting for this theater piece by and for a new generation of Japanese artists.
Despairing dramas about
"Hijikata Mon Amour"
Vangeline
NY Butoh Institute Festival 2019
Theater for the New City, New York
October 26, 2019
Japan and France have long been yoked together by their mutual obsession with each others' elegant style. The US and Japan are connected forever by the atom bomb. "Hijikata Mon Amour" is a bridge connecting those three cultures, and – in the subversive, twisted way of Butoh – an attack on each of them.
The dancer-choreographer is Vangeline, a French performer now living
Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki)
Sugimoto Bunraku Puppet Theater
Rose Theater, Lincoln Center, New York
October 19, 2019
"The Love Suicides at Sonezaki," which opened Lincoln's Center's tenth annual White Light Festival, tells the tale of a young Osaka shop clerk and a teenage prostitute who kill themselves rather than face life apart. It was banned in Japan in 1723 after a wave of copycat love suicides, and not performed again until 1955. The US premiere
"Void and Vessel," "Mogari," "Hildergardis”
The New York Butoh Institute Festival 2019
Theater for the New City, New York
October 19, 2019
Butoh is an art form that rose from the ruins of the atom bombing of Japan – an event that recalled the Big Bang at the beginning of time, and presaged the Resurrection of the Dead. Both were evoked last night at the second annual New York Butoh Institute Festival.
This year’s festival features 14 performers,
2019 Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, New York
May 14, 2019
Neck-deep in controversy even before it began, the 79th Whitney Biennial opened today –- organized by two adventurous young women, showcasing emerging artists and artists of color, many of them under 40 years old. Curators Jane Panetta and Ru Hockney set out to reflect the current American turmoil in both social and aesthetic issues. Their show delivers with a panoply of objects d’
Pepperland
Mark Morris Dance Group
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn, New York
May 11, 2019
Great artists know where they shouldn't go. George Balanchine, for example, never choreographed to Beethoven, because he said Beethoven's works were complete in themselves, nothing to add. Mark Morris could have used that kind of discernment when he accepted a commission for a 50th-anniversary tribute to the Beatles’ masterpiece “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The resulting
"Estado Vegetal"
Manuela Infante
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
May 3, 2019
In medical Spanish, "Estado Vegetal" means a vegetative state, where basic life functions go on but consciousness and thought are absent. Politically, a "Vegetative State" could mean rule by the plant kingdom. This intense theatrical piece, starring a young Chilean woman and an array of potted plants, suggests such a state is exactly where humanity is headed.
The plot is a parable – an