"Eleven", "Dans l'Engrenage", "Shadow Lands", "Salvaje"
Fall for Dance, Program 2
New York City Center
New York, New York
October 3, 2019

The second program of Fall for Dance opened and closed with live music, a rare luxury nowadays.  Mark Morris' women dominated the opening dance and the final performance was an all male affair from the Argentine group Malevo.  The two middle pieces had mixed casts, (very loud) recorded music, a lot of energy, and some fairly

“(in)Visible"
Jess Curtis/Gravity
CounterPulse
San Francisco, CA
Oct. 3, 2019

Even in an area as rich in experimental dance as this one, choreographers can still surprise us with one more question asked. If the inquiries don’t always convince, if cogently asked, they at least resonate a little on the way out of the theater. Jess Curtis/Gravity’s “(in)Visible,” developed in Berlin and receiving its local premiere at CounterPulse, did much more than that. At seventy-minutes

"Take Five" "The Man in Black" "Carmina Burana"
Smuin Contemporary Ballet
Cowell Theater
San Francisco, CA
September 27, 2019

Smuin Contemporary Ballet’s sixteen dancers opened the company’s 26^th season with an infectious verve and the confidence to take on whatever might come down the line. (The fact that soon they will move into a home of their own just may have contributed to the upbeat mood). They also welcomed five new colleagues, some of whom already

“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 

“Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich”
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker
New York Live Arts
New York, NY
September 26, 2019

It is hard to get much more minimalist than this, especially while offering so much. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s latest re-staging of her early composition continues to mesmerize. On the bare stage, a pair of women moved in and out of hypnotic parallel to four musical “phases” by Steve Reich. In pale gray shifts and sneakers,

“Valse Fantaisie", "Kammermusik No. 2", "Union Jack"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
September 21, 2019 evening

One of the casualties of a wholesale shift in programming last spring (along with "Liebeslieder Waltzer" and a revival of Jerome Robbins' "Branden- burgs"), "Union Jack'" is back. This was the best news of the night. Otherwise, things were often tipsy-turvy, including starting the evening, far from Balanchine's view of a triple bill – appetizer, main course and

“Raymonda Variations,” “Variations Pour Une Porte et Un Soupir,” “DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
September 22, 2019 (matinee)

New York City Ballet could have presented any combination of works for its “Balanchine + Wheeldon” program, but the particular selection of George Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations” and “Variations Pour Une Porte et Un Soupir” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse” worked to highlight Balanchine’s creative genius, while

“Isadora Duncan”
Jérôme Bel
FIAF “Crossing the Line” Festival
Florence Gould Hall
New York, NY
September 25, 2019

The purity of Isadora Duncan’s simple, powerful movement and vision was represented with gentle ardor in Jérôme Bel’s framed portrait of the iconic dancer. “Isadora Duncan” was danced, in its US premiere, by Catherine Gallant, a long-time student of the Duncan technique, but the event was as much lesson as a performance. Using the program’s simple structure, Gallant offered

“Jewels"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
September 21, 2019 evening

George Balanchine's "Jewels" is now fifty-two years old. A hit from its first performance, it still reliably fills the house, for several reasons. It has sets (of varying degrees of success over three iterations) and costumes and lasts a full evening, all of which is counter to the generally held assumptions about the New York City Ballet's repertory. It has all the trappings

“Mozart Dances”
Mark Morris Dance Group
Zellerbach Auditorium
CalPerformances
Berkeley, CA
September 20, 2019

Mark Morris gets justifiably praised for the depth of his musicality but he most certainly also keeps our attention with the breadth of his imagination. The three parts of “Mozart Dances”, set in 2006 to the Piano Concertos No. 11 and 27 and the Sonata for Two Pianos, offer an extraordinary insight into Mozart, above all as a genius of crystalline clarity of music as abstraction.

National Dance Day at the REACH
Featuring "Fela! The Concert"
Main Stage at the REACH
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
September 21, 2019

In December of 2018, Netflix released a new interactive film called "Bandersnatch." The psychological thriller was inspired by choose-your-own-adventure novels, requiring the viewer to make decisions throughout the movie that fundamentally altered the plot of the story. This unusual type of viewing experience gained popularity rather quickly, as each person