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Dances Galore

January 27, 2013 by 2 Comments
Jason MacDonald (L) and Eric Bourne in Black Flowers. Photo: Eric Bandiero

It’s hardly fair to David Parsons to see one of his company’s performances at the Joyce the night after the New York City Ballet’s first all-Tchaikovsky program of the season. Wednesday, Balanchine’s Mozartiana, Thursday, Parsons’s Wolfgang. The company that Parsons founded in 1987 is wildly popular with audiences. He gives them a lot: lively, accomplished dancers; eye-catching lighting (by Howell Binkley) and costumes; variety in terms of subject matter and mood. His movement style, which owes something to his own years as a major … [Read more...]

01/27/13 1:04 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

See the Music

January 27, 2013 by 10 Comments
Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, keeping an eye on his creations

George Balanchine once said that during his grueling years as a pupil in the Imperial St. Petersburg Theatrical School, he didn’t fall in love with ballet until he was twelve. The change occurred the first time he appeared onstage in Marius Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty, set to Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score, and young Georgi Melitonovitch was cast as a Cupid. His arrows, so to speak, boomeranged back, and he was smitten. Tchaikovsky remained Balanchine’s favorite Russian composer (barring Stravinsky, of course), and the … [Read more...]

01/27/13 11:46 AM | filed under: ballet |

Oh Those Feet!

January 24, 2013 by 1 Comment
(L to R): Gene Shields, Noellia Garcia Carmena, and Shamar Rooks of the New Ballet Ensemble and School. Photo: Nicolette Overton

Silence doesn’t play a large role in Michelle Dorrance’s SOUNDspace. In the Danspace performances of Dorrance Dance/New York, the choreographer treats St. Mark’s Church as an acoustic instrument, and the building is happy to comply. Back in 1795, when its cornerstone was laid, ministers had no microphones, and the voices of parishioners hymning their lungs out could make it seem as if the high vaulted ceiling overhead was merely a stop on the way to heaven. To a tap artist like Dorrance, resonance goes hand in hand with rhythm, and a … [Read more...]

01/24/13 2:17 PM | filed under: tap and. . . |

Slow Down; Now Breathe

January 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Eiko rising. Photo: Anna Lee Campbell

You’re informed by program material that the compellingly idiosyncratic French choreographer Myriam Gourfink works with scores, sometimes with computers, in devising her dances, and that the breathing techniques of yoga are fundamental to her process. You learn that she is concerned with the “micro-movements” affiliated with breath and how these infinitesimal inner adjustments conspire to move her through space. All this projects to the spectator as uncannily extreme slowness on the part of the performer, as well as a pungent duality. In … [Read more...]

01/22/13 9:23 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

And Then They Talked Some More

January 17, 2013 by 7 Comments
Cameron (L) and Aoki turn creaturely. Photo: © Christ Cameron

Whoever said that dancers can’t talk well in public? These days, shutting up and just dancing is often not in the cards (there are some particulars that movement alone can’t reveal). This struck me when five of the seven performances that I managed to take in during four days of the annual event-crammed conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) involved speech. Thursday, 1/10, 6PM, Florence Gould Hall at the French Institute/Alliance Française: Gustavia. In this collaborative duet, the noted French … [Read more...]

01/17/13 3:37 PM | filed under: dance theater |

Dancing around the Bride

January 10, 2013 by 4 Comments
Dancing Cunningham, October 26. Front (L to R): Melissa Toogood, John Hinrichs, Emma Desjardins. Rear: Marcie Munnerlyn, Brandon Collwes. Photo: Constance Mensh

“May I have the next dance, Marcel?”  “But of course, John!”  “Thank you. By the way, Bob and Jap hope to have a chance too. Merce, of course, is already leaping about somewhere.”  Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg and Duchamp, the stunning exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (through January 21), affirms the close artistic and personal connections among John Cage (1912-1992), Merce Cunningham (1919-2009), Jasper Johns (b. 1930), and Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008); Cage was Cunningham’s … [Read more...]

01/10/13 11:48 AM | filed under: mixed media |

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