“Hallelujah Junction,” “Herman Schmerman,” “The Exchange,” “Concerto DSCH”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
April 24, 2019

One of the most exciting things about New York City Ballet as a company is the sheer number of new choreographic works it manages to usher into the world season after season.  That it has whole programs devoted to 21^st century choreographers is a testament to that, and those tend to be my favorite evenings

“The Little Mermaid”
San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
April 19, 2019

Stunning performances, particularly by Yuan Yuan Tan who we cannot possibly hope to again approach the mastery she brought to the title role of John Neumeier’s “The Little Mermaid,” left many of us speechless with admiration. If anything Tan brought an even more spellbinding intensity to her character’s physical frailty and fierce spirit. You couldn’t take her eyes off her in

“Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event”
Merce Cunningham (staged by Patricia Lent)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn, NY
April 16, 2019

The blockbuster birthday party celebrating Merce Cunningham’s 100th could not have made a better case for the enduring power of his choreography and vision. In creating this “event” (his own phrase about reconfiguring dance elements to make a new work,) three splendid, invented “companies” of 25 dancers each were assembled to offer live performances in Brooklyn, Los

“Art Songs” “Pole Star”
Alonzo King Lines Ballet
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
April 12 and 17, 2019

Misreading of curtain time made me miss the major part of Alonzo King’s reworking of his 2016 “Art Songs” which opened the company’s spring season. I thought it necessary to return since a partial perspective of a work never makes sense. Also, the new “Pole Star”, with original music, performed live by composer Van-Anh Vanessa Vo,

“The Legacy of The New Dance Group”
Choreography by Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow and Talley Beatty
Coolidge Auditorium
The Library of Congress
Washington, DC
April 19, 2019

Seldom anymore do we get to see live performances of historic modern dance or, as it is called with loving irony, of “old modern”. Once upon a time, it constituted a successful revolution, or at least a fashion. That was from the 1920s into the 1960s, and not only in America.

“Significant Strangers,” “Counterpoint,” “Blind Revelry”
Tom Gold Dance
The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College
New York, NY
April 3, 2019

The spring program by Tom Gold Dance at The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, lasting only two days, was brief but choreogra- phically engaging. Tom Gold’s three works selected for the evening presented whimsical partnerships with the world premiere of “Significant Strangers,” theater with the New York premiere of last year’s dramatic “Blind Revelry,” and distinctly more modern

“5 Soldiers: The Body is the Frontline”
Rosie Kay Dance Company
San Francisco Performances
Taube Atrium Theater
San Francisco, CA
April 11, 2019

A West Coast American premiere of a work created in Britain is not an everyday event. One produced “In Association with the British Army” definitely would have to be considered esoteric. Kudos for San Francisco Performances for having taking the risk to program something as unusual. The Rosie Kay Dance Company’s “5 Soldiers: The Body is

“Le Corsaire”
The Mariinsky Ballet
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
April 11, 2019

Eighty-one dancers are listed by Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet in its current Kennedy Center program. That does not include the children who supplement in the grand, Act 3 divertissement of “Le Corsaire”. These junior dancers are local, from two ballet schools – the DC Kirov Academy and The Washington School of Ballet. Of the company’s regular dancers, 44 appear

New Works and New Productions
“Easy”, “In the Night”, “The Runaway”, “Something to Dance About”
New York City Ballet
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
April 5, 2019

The dancers of New York City Ballet are artists in their own right. They may not be the masterminds behind the locomotive patterns in which they travel or the original composers of the movement they exude, but in the end, they decide what happens on

“Le Corsaire”
The Mariinsky Ballet
Opera House
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
April 9, 2019

A minimum of five composers, four text smiths, plus ten choreographers and ballet masters was required to reconstruct the 19th Century ballet “Le Corsaire”, which the Mariinsky company has brought to Washington. It shows. The action is choppy, especially at the start of what is a three-act production with prologue and epilogue. Not even mentioned up front in the

“Live! The Realest MC”
A.I.M.
NYU Skirball
New York, New York
April 4, 2019

There was a time when both choreographers and critics thought dance should say it all. Language in any form was considered a corrupting influence that compromised dance’s autonomy. However, as modernism has faded, dancers have stopped being afraid of language. Now it is more often seen as a valuable adjunct to dance. I thought of that during Kyle Abraham’s concert at the