Precious Gems: Precious Jewels Variations from “Alladin,” “Aria,” “Tarantella,” Solo from “Lambarena,” “Variations for Four,” Sicilienne from “Emeralds,” Duet from “Concerto Six Twenty-Two,” “Paquita”
Capitol Theatre
Salt Lake City, UT
April 15, 2021

What would ballet look like on a theater stage, when it returns, has been a question plaguing most ballet lovers and insiders alike, and as one of the first companies in the world, and certainly in the United States, to bring its dancers back in front

"Symphony #9," "Wooden Dimes," "Swimmer"
San Francisco Ballet
Streaming      
March 10, 2021 

For anybody with doubts about Ballet being a contemporary art form, this was the show to see. Alexander Ratmansky’s “Symphony #9” and Yuri Possokhov’s “Swimmer” bracketed Danielle Rowe’s world premiere of “Wooden Dimes.” They made for an intelligent satisfying evening of 21^st century dance. There was barely a false note among them. 

Co-commissioned by American Ballet Theatre,

#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

“Midsummer Night’s Dream”
San Francisco Ballet
January 28, 2021
Streamed

If you have to watch streamed full-length ballets, you probably could do not much better than San Francisco’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (available until February 10). This jewel received a single on-stage performance last April, the night before the SF Opera House closed. With a different cast, recorded last summer, it will have to do until sometime after the Company returns live. Yet Frank Zamacona’s

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

“Leap into the New Year”
San Francisco Ballet
Streaming
January 14,2021

Rarely has the life-giving part of live performances, whether music, theater or dance, been more clearly demonstrated than San Francisco Ballet’s on-line Gala “Leap Into the New Year” on January 14, 2021.  Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, who will retire in June 2022, assembled an intriguing program with excerpts from four upcoming world premieres, two duets from the repertoire, and three Pas de Deux from

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

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
"Breathing at the Boundaries"
December 29, 2020
on YouTube                             

The last few months, looking at one more piece of choreography on screen made me wonder whether it might not be preferable to wait till the dancers could come back for live audiences. With few exceptions, despite honest efforts, the screen had offered few encouraging examples of vivid imaginations getting a handle

“Suite Donuts,” “The Moor’s Pavane,” “There is a Time”
José Limón Company
Streamed Live at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park
Tivoli, NY
December 19, 2020

As the José Limón Company began “There is a Time,” the final piece in their live- streamed performance at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, the dancers swept into the circle of time that Limón created in this 1956 classic. Based on the biblical wisdom of Ecclesiastes (“for every time, there is a season,”)  the twelve dancers swayed,