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East to West to East

October 29, 2012 by 3 Comments
(L to R) Nathan Makolandra, Morgan Lugo, and (aloft) Charlie Hodges in Benjamin Millepied's Moving Parts. Photo: Stephanie Berger

A choreographer who has just formed his own small company must be very, very brave to make Merce Cunningham’s 1964 Winterbranch the centerpiece of its debut program. Benjamin Millepied is certifiably brave. Starting a group in Los Angeles and naming it the L.A. Dance Project is already adventurous. I’m an Angeleno by birth, with the scent of eucalyptus and Pacific salt air embedded in my environmental DNA, and though the city’s cultural profile has soared in recent decades, I know that live performance isn’t a major component of what … [Read more...]

10/29/12 7:14 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

In Season

October 23, 2012 by 1 Comment
The peerless Herman Cornejo in Ratmansky's Symphony #9. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Hello!  Goodbye! American Ballet Theatre’s City Center season came and went with dispiriting speed—seven performances in five days (October 16 through 20). The pleasures outweighed the disappointment. New Yorkers could rendezvous with revivals of three ballets in the company’s history: Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo (1942), Antony Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading (1977), and Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes (1988).  Alexei Ratmansky premiered a gorgeous new ballet. And a live orchestra played the music. Ratmansky’s … [Read more...]

10/23/12 7:35 PM | filed under: ballet |

Forever Pina

October 21, 2012 by 1 Comment
Damiano Ottavio Bigi (L) and Rainer Behr anchored by Morena Nascimento. Photo: Stephanie Berger

Pina Bausch’s last work, created in the six months before her death in June 2009, takes its title from a line in a song by the Chilean singer Violeta Parra, who committed suicide in 1967. The dance is called . . .como el mosguito en la piedra ay si, si, si. . . . , and the name of the song is Volver a los 17. What is it that makes us feel 17 again?  In the end the song’s refrain, with its evocation of a little patch of moss growing on a stone (and ivy clinging to a wall), reveals its subject. Only love can restore our innocence. This … [Read more...]

10/21/12 4:24 PM | filed under: dance theater |

Don’t Stop the Dance!

October 21, 2012 by 1 Comment
Working feet. Thibault Lac and ?. Photo: Miana Jun Thxo

Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem (Made to Measure)/Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (M2M) may be the longest title in Trajal Harrell’s series of works titled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church. (As you will note, it results in a sentence that’s practically a runway.) In keeping with the fashion references that are integral to the idea, Harrell labels each piece by size—beginning with extra small. He’s made six so far, and the seventh and last is to be a book.  Fans in Japan, Brazil, Canada, and … [Read more...]

10/21/12 9:15 AM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

A Pas de Deux and a Society in Chaos

October 14, 2012 by 1 Comment
Raimund Hoghe. A sash becomes a hat. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

  Dance doesn’t happen in a vacuum. One evening, I’m at the Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Howard Gilman Space—glancing from time to time at the night city glowing outside two big windows, listening to some rich recorded music, and watching a delicately intense, sometimes barely moving dance by two people that traverses two hours without intermission.  The next night I’m in another theater named after the same generous patron, BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House. This time, the music is loud and calamitous, the dancing … [Read more...]

10/14/12 3:41 PM | filed under: New Dance from Abroad |

Calm Thou My Soul

October 9, 2012 by 3 Comments
Douglas Dunn's Cassations (foreground: Christopher Williams). Photo: Jules Bakshi

Lovesick swains praying for either consummation or forgetfulness, maidens lamenting their lovers’ absences, men excoriating their faithless mistresses, women attacking men like bacchantes on a rampage, nymphs and shepherds, captive creatures, fever and repose, solitude and tender companionship. You might imagine that’s rather a lot to put into a dance, but Douglas Dunn expresses all that and more in his fantastically beautiful Cassations.  Dunn is one of the most imaginative, distinctive, and occasionally eccentric choreographers I can … [Read more...]

10/9/12 1:12 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

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