"Lacunae" "Shutter" "Unlocking/Elpis"
Amy Seiwert's Imagery
ODC Theater
San Francisco, CA
June 28, 2018

Amy Seiwert, until recently Choreo- grapher in Residence with Smuin Contemporary Ballet and founder of her own Imagery company, started a summer program she called Sketches eight years ago. She has explained the project as a way to allow her the kind the risk taking for which commissions are not always the best vehicle. More than anything, she feared falling into established, even successful,

Royal Danish Ballet
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
Beckett, MA
June 20, 2018
by Gay Morris

The Royal Danish Ballet, founded in 1748, calls itself the third oldest ballet company, but its August Bournonville repertory gives it something like eternal youth. Bournonville’s village girls and boys breathe a freshness that exists nowhere else. Fortunately for audiences, a good deal of Bournonville choreography was included in the program a group of dancers from the Danish company offered for the opening

"Ritmo" "Ambiguous Dance" "Laughing Frame" "We are all Dragons in Drag" “Tableaux 2017” “Divine Conversations”
San Francisco International Arts Festival
Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, CA
May 31-June 3, 2018

This year’s San Francisco International Arts Festival offered a line-up similar to the one it has since 2013. That means Circus, Comedy, Music, Performance, Theater and Video, the vast majority from the Bay Area. Given the “international” in the name, the Festival disappoints almost every year. For

"Snap" "Homing" "The Old Child" "Jardi Tancat"
SF Danceworks
Cowell Theater
San Francisco, CA
June 8, 2018

Good choreography, well performed. What else could you want? If this formula includes new and contemporary choreography by a group of independent dancers whose sense of ensemble is excellent, you get an intelligent, challenging evening of dance that makes you look forward to what else is coming down the line. Such again was the impact of the now three-year old SF Danceworks

"What Counts", "This, and My Heart Beside...", "Trio Sonatas", "Undercurrent"
Lydia Johnson Dance
The Ailey Citigroup Theater
New York, New York
June 7, 2018

Lydia Johnson's chamber ballet troupe presented one premiere ("Under- current") and three recent works in its New York season.  She has a great respect for music, shown by the detailed credits; unlike many programs, hers included both the composer and the title of the work, as well as the specific recording which was used,

"La Source", "In Creases", "Circus Polka", "Western Symphony"
School of American Ballet
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
New York, NY
June 1, 2018 matinee

The afternoon began with a disconcerting jolt. The curtain rose on "La Source" revealing not the lead couple, but two members of the corps standing sentinel at the back corners of the stage. In deference to its student performers, "La Source" had been reconceived and recombined. Instead of two pas de deux interlarded with soloist and ensemble