"Xenos"
Akram Khan Company
Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances
Berkeley, CA
March 2, 2019

When last Saturday night the stage went dark at the end of Akram Khan’s “Xenos,” nobody moved in the near-capacity audience of the 2,600-seat Zellerbach Hall. The silence was deafening. Finally, a small, dirt-covered figure walked downstage, and the hall exploded. “Xenos” supposedly, is Khan’s last solo performance. With his first-rate collaborators he created a haunting meditation on what it

“Sleeping Beauty”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
February 21, 2019

“Sleeping Beauty” is many things to a ballet lover. One of Tchaikovsky’s greatest scores, the ballet laid the foundation for the post-World War II ballet boom when Ashton’s staging for the Royal Ballet, starring Margot Fonteyn, took the Euro-American stages by storm with its Rose Adagio and famous balances. But first and foremost, the debut of young Indiana Woodward

“To Create a World”
Gallim
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
February 13, 2019

It takes some chutzpah “To Create a World.” Choreo- grapher Andrea Miller, along with the Gallim dancers, had good reason to attempt the feat, in the premiere of their new work. On a stage of swirling, contorted bodies bathed in deep color and harsh swipes of light and dark, Gallim inhabited a place apart, in a community of unique movement and connection.

"Divining"
little seismic dance company
ODC Theater, San Francisco
February 16, 2019

The first time I saw Katie Faulkner’s choreography was when, as a member of AXIS Dance Company 2003-2007, she set “Decorum” on three dancers, a wheelchair and a sofa. It was one of those “where did she come from?" moments. For her own little seismic dance company, she has since made and performed dance films, solos on herself and for small groups. She also created the

"The Fifth Season," "Snowbird," "Etudes"
San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco
February 14, 2019

The third season program again showed the SFB in fine mettle with Helgi Tomasson’s darkly hued “The Fifth Season,” the heart-breaking “Snowbird” by Cathy Marston, and one of the oddest works in Ballet repertoire, Harald Lander’s “Etudes”, first performed by SFB in 1998. For that one the dancers ought to have been given a bonus for the sheer stamina and

“Sleeping Beauty”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
February 13, 2019

Nearly 15 months after Peter Martins’ resignation from New York City Ballet, where an interim artistic team continues to run things during the search for his successor, his elaborate production of “The Sleeping Beauty” went back on stage Wednesday night for the first of fourteen performances. Yet with a full house and Martins himself in the audience, the opening night was anything but

"Divertimento No 15" "Appassionata" "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming"
San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
February 12, 2019

Superb, intriguing, inviting is a good as tag I can come up with for San Francisco Ballet’s second 2019 Season program. Attending with a friend who grew up on New York City Ballet in its seventies, it was amusing to see at how stunned he was with the quality of the SFB dancers. The program, indeed, was

"Interplay", "In the Night", "N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
February 5, 2019

Youth must be served, as the old saying goes, and no choreographer served youth as assiduously as Jerome Robbins. He admired the audacity of the young Twyla Tharp, using Central Park as a performance space, and was often the first to spot – and spotlight – young talent at the New York City Ballet, particularly among the male dancers. And, above all,

"Impact"
Kristin Damrow & Company
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Forum
San Francisco, CA
January 31, 2019

Every once in a while a piece of information pops up in my computer that intrigues more than others. Such was the case when the Kristin Damrow & Company announced the premiere of “Impact,” at Yerba Buena Center’s Forum, a large non-proscenium space that has challenged many a choreographer. Brutalist architecture, apparently, influenced this piece by an artist unknown to

“Verklärte Nacht”
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York, NY
January 30, 2019

in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s “Verklärte Nacht,” Cynthia Loemij crashed elegantly to the floor in tumble after tumble, a wave of relentless feeling and pain. Set to Arnold Schönberg’s dramatic early string sextet, both the score and the choreography told the story in Richard Dehmel’s 19C poem about love and forgiveness. With a crisp and beautifully danced duet, De Keersmaeker, like Schönberg,

“Herman Schmerman,” “Principia,” “The Runaway”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater,
New York, New York
February 3, 2019

Under the rubric, “New Combinations,” New York City Ballet brought together a premiere by Justin Peck, a new ballet from the fall season by Kyle Abraham, and a ballet by William Forsythe that hasn’t been seen in full since 1994. It proved to be the kind of imaginative programming that makes elements and associations visible that might not otherwise