“Fandango,” “Bloom,” “Where We Dwell”
Roman Mejia, Tiler Peck and Herman Cornejo, Ayodele Casel
Fall For Dance – Program 5
New York City Center
New York, NY
October 23, 2021
The last program of this year’s Fall For Dance Festival looked back in looking ahead. Alexei Ratmansky’s 2010 work “Fandango” was presented in a restaging on a male dancer form, Justin Peck’s new work “Bloom” drew heavily on George Balanchine’s iconic “Tchaikovsky Pas De Deux,” and the
“Mapping Out A Sky,” “38109,” “Each In His Own Time,” “Meet Ella”
BalletX, Lil Buck, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Caleb Teicher & Company
New York City Center
New York, NY
October 22, 2021
The Fall For Dance Festival never really left, considering the two programs it offered in a digital streaming format last year, but still its return to a live audience felt like a homecoming. A bonus on the second night of Program 4 was the unscheduled appearance
Opening of the 2021/2022 Season
The Washington Ballet
National Building Museum
Washington, DC
October 21, 2021
This opening program was not what the publicity had led people to expect. It was an evening of divertissements, some classic, some new and others somewhat familiar. "Flames of Paris" a 1932 extravaganza by Vassily Vainonen from Soviet Russia that promulgates revolution but not necessarily democracy, wasn't attempted in its entirety. Only the well known, acrobatic, neoclassical pas de deux was shown.
“Deep Blue Sea”
Bill T. Jones
Drill Hall, Park Avenue Armory
New York, New York
October 3, 2021
When, on Sunday, the audience entered the Park Avenue Armory to see Bill T. Jones’ latest work, “Deep Blue Sea,” Jones was already there. He slowly moved through various patterns, as people flowed past him. Then he shifted to another part of the enormous space of the Drill Hall to go through more patterns, actions which he continued to execute in different
book review
Book: "No Fixed Points. Dance in the 20th Century."
by Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick
Yale University Press, 2003
and recently reprinted
This book hits readers like a space rock, all 907 pages of it. Its authors, Nancy Reynolds and the late Malcolm McCormack (1927 - 2018) were dancers and have proven themselves to be scholars. My only real objection to the current edition is the difficulty of holding such a thick book in one's hands or even resting it
“Sky to Hold,” “Suspended Animation,” “Western Symphony”
David Koch Theater, Lincoln Center
New York, New York
October 2, 2021
Last week, New York City Ballet premiered two works that pointed toward an expanding reach into the twenty-first century. It is a healthy sign in a company that often seems to have settled into a narrow repertory that looks to the past in works dominated by Robbins and Balanchine, and choreographers influenced by Balanchine or the Russian school.
Both
book review
Book: "Todd Bolender, Janet Reed, and the Making of American Ballet"
by Martha Ullman
West University Press of Florida, 2021
388 pages with black/white photos
The noisiest individual about nationality in dance in the America of the 20th Century was Lincoln Kirstein - sponsor, writer, would-be patriot. Never mind that the choreographer he admired the most, George Balanchine, was from Russia by way of Serge Diaghilev's international Ballets Russes. Kirstein advocated against what he considered the "superficial" Americanism
Denishawn
Dances by Ruth St. Denis & Ted Shawn
The Theatre at St. Jean's, New York
October 2, 2021
Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis are known as the "mother and father of American Modern Dance," but the works they choreographed and performed have been lost for years. All that remained were dusty photographs and flickering, black-and-white films. It was a case study in the ephemeral nature of dance--- until it all began again.
“Amaria,” “Opus 19/The Dreamer,” “Russian Seasons”
David Koch Theater, Lincoln Center
New York, New York
September 25, 2021
New York City Ballet is at last back at Lincoln Center, and a cause for celebration it is, after eighteen months of virus induced absence. The fall season, which began September 21, continues through October 17. Yet, it seems no gain can come without loss these days, and so we learn that by the end of May six senior principal dancers
Kyle Marshall Choreography
"Stellar"
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York
June 7-21, 2021 (online)
Which comes first, music or dance? In Kyle Marshall's choreography, it's neither. Music and dance are two sides of one art form, improvising against each other. Friction, ignition, liftoff, jazz. Marshall's new "Stellar" knits together city streets with the loneliness of deep space, and grounds them in the earth of Mother Africa. All in little more than twenty
Shared Program: LaMama Moves! Dance Festival 2021
Jasmine Hearn/ Songs from Pleasure Memory
Sugar Vendil/ Test Sites
Outdoors at Downtown Art/Alpha Omega, New York City
May 23, 2021
Sixty years after the Sixties, The East Village can still feel like the most sensuous part of New York. Like their spiritual forebears, people in this low-rise, low-rent district live for pleasure – erotic, psychedelic and aesthetic. So it felt right that a graffiti-scarred vacant lot on East
Kolonial
Stefanie Batten Bland, choreographer
Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York (online)
May 3-17, 2021
America is starting to emerge from 14 months of viral living, but like all traumas, this pandemic year will live on in mind and body. Reams of research and acres of art will record how we lived and died with the coronavirus, and how it changed us. Ahead of the game, the Baryshnikov Arts Center of New York is already out with