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At Sea

September 25, 2011 by 5 Comments
Princess Honorata (Sara Mearns) and Prince Stone (Robert Fairchild) Photo: Paul Kolnik

Here’s a fairy tale for 2011. Once upon a time, a very important knight—one of the great musicians of the late 20thcentury—joined forces with an adept ruler-choreographer (also a knight) who had inherited a powerful kingdom of dance. They set out together on a quest to find the true grail—a beautiful ballet that would further ennoble them both and maybe even bring in money. As far as we know, they underwent no terrible ordeals, battled no giants, slew no dragons. Eventually they fell together into a nicely decorated pit and rode home … [Read more...]

09/25/11 6:16 PM | filed under: ballet |

Past Present

September 25, 2011 by 4 Comments
Talli Jackson and Erick Montes channel Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

It is 1979; it is 2011. It’s 1981; no it’s 2011. Bill T. Jones wears glasses now, and I can’t read without mine. Arnie Zane died in 1988; his spirit and his name live on in the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In the 1960s, I was a founding member of Dance Theater Workshop. In the 1970s, Bill made his ferocious New York debut as a soloist on that organization’s Fresh Tracks series. In 2011, his company and DTW merged in New York Live Arts. Forgive me if my head is spinning. NYLA’s 2011-2012 offerings at the 219 West 19th … [Read more...]

09/25/11 12:55 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Merce Redivivus

September 15, 2011 by 3 Comments
new Sounddance 4, AJ

Stand in a summer field at dusk, and you’re surrounded by a silence that only seems silent. Intermittently a bird calls, a wild apple falls from a tree, a sudden wind ruffles leaves. In the distance, a figure bends down to pick something.  On a busy city street, it’s almost impossible not to be in motion and enveloped by motion and noise. The soundscape is dense with the whoosh of traffic, human babble, horns, sirens. These thoughts were stirred up by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s performances at Bard College, September 9 … [Read more...]

09/15/11 10:56 AM | filed under: contemporary dance |

What the Funk!

September 1, 2011 by 2 Comments
David Dorfman gives the sign

David Dorfman’s Prophets of Funk might well be subtitled The Way We Were. He first heard Sly and the Family Stone as a college freshman, back in 1973, and no doubt mourned the band’s demise in 1983.  When the Jacob’s Pillow audience gets its first look at Dorfman during the work’s August run there, he’s surely channeling his younger self. Advancing along a diagonal—a bulky man, limber in his loose clothes, strutting and wiggling and kicking high to the boom-boom of  music by Sylvester Stewart (aka Sly Stone)—he’s in heaven. … [Read more...]

09/1/11 4:53 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

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