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No Words

April 1, 2013 by 1 Comment
LaMichael Leonard, Jr. (foreground); at back, Joseph Poulson carrying ?. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Bill T. Jones is a taking a holiday from the spoken word. The last time he did that may have been in 1992. Unlike his Serenade/The Proposition (2008), Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray (2009), and Story/Time (2011), none of those on view during the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company’s season at the Joyce Theater (March 26 through April 7) makes use of text. None of them presents a view of current political or social injustices. All but one are set to the works of major dead composers that Jones reveres, and Beethoven figures … [Read more...]

04/1/13 8:22 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Shining Up the Past

March 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Maya Oguri in James Waring's Eccentric Beauty. Photo: Darial Sneed

New York Theatre Ballet’s name says more about it than its location.  Not often do you see “theatre” spelled that way these days (American Ballet Theatre is one of the exceptions), but once it was the norm. There’s something winningly and intelligently nostalgic about artistic director Diana Byer's choices of repertory for the small company that she founded in 1976. Byer has an unerring eye for which existing chamber works by great choreographers will suit her dancers and which young choreographers will contribute ballets that go … [Read more...]

03/29/13 4:08 PM | filed under: mixed bill |

Giselle, Meet Hanako

March 28, 2013 by 1 Comment
Yasuko Yokoshi in Hanako's final transformation. Photo: Ian Douglas

Three barefoot women wearing long, deep-blue tutus; tight, white blouses; and blue stirrup socks confront a visitor. She is spectacularly attired in an embroidered kimono over a red velvet garment that terminates in pantlegs so full that they look like a skirt. Her wig is red and so is her lipstick. She has entered with the tiny, smooth steps of a Japanese Kabuki performer; the women in tutus have previously sprinted about the stage doing buoyant, soft-edged ballet steps to some of Adolphe Adam’s music for Giselle. However, Julie Alexander, … [Read more...]

03/28/13 7:51 PM | filed under: postmodern views |

A Nightmare Turns Fifty

March 22, 2013 by 6 Comments
Paul Taylor's Scudorama. Laura Halzak (prone), Michelle Fleet (in air), Jamie Rae Walker (L), Julie Tice (in an earlier cast). Photo: Paul B. Goode

Wishing Happy 50th birthday to a dance like Paul Taylor’s Scudorama mightn’t be a good idea. The cake could blow up in your face. You have to be a bit crazy to love this dance. Made the year after Aureole, which lives on in an indestructible springtime, Scudorama cringes and crawls and hides from view. The current revival dates from 2009. Scudorama’s 1963 premiere at the American Dance Festival in New London, Connecticut, was, by all accounts, disastrous.  The score by Clarence Jackson didn’t arrive in time. Neither did the set by … [Read more...]

03/22/13 4:54 PM | filed under: classic modern dance |

Face as Fact

March 21, 2013 by 2 Comments
L to R: Silas Riener, Cori Kresge, Rashaun Mitchell, and Melissa Toogood in Mitchell's Interface. Photo: Stephanie Berger

I remember years ago attending a evening of solos by an Indian dancer; it could have been Balasaraswati or Ritha Devi, and shortly after that, going to a performance by (maybe) American Ballet Theatre’s Bayadère. My friend and colleague, Marcia B. Siegel also saw both performances. When we spoke later, we both remembered how the familiar classical arm and hand movements of ballet had suddenly seemed so simple and the faces of the dancers so expressionless, compared to the precise complexity of the Indian performer’s fingers and hands,  … [Read more...]

03/21/13 6:02 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Heat and Ice

March 16, 2013 by 1 Comment
Annika Hyvären (L) and Natasha Lommi in Tero Saarinen's

I regret not having been able to see Carte Blanche, the Norwegian National Dance Company, perform Corps de Walk at the Joyce Theater. In this piece by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, the dancers, I read, have whitened hair and wear blue contact lenses. What better illustration of the Nordic mini-festival’s name: Ice Hot? The other participants were the Tero Saarinen Company and  Danish Dance Theatre. If Saarinen’s  Scheme of Things tells us something about his Finnish homeland, that may because of his fascination with light, which in far … [Read more...]

03/16/13 4:02 PM | filed under: New Dance from Abroad |

Taylor Made

March 13, 2013 by 2 Comments
Sean Mahoney and Amy Young in Paul Taylor's Perpetual Dawn. Photo: Paul B. Goode

Can one refer to someone as a perpetual dark horse, or is that a contradiction?  If not, I’d like to apply it to Paul Taylor.  You can never predict what he’ll come up with, or what thumbscrews he’ll apply to his essentially buoyant vocabulary of steps. Among the 21 works on view during the Paul Taylor Dance Company’s three-week season at Lincoln Center, some, such as Speaking in Tongues, are big and tormented; others are nightmarish, e.g. Last Look. Some are ineffably tender and mellow like Eventide; others are tart and joke-filled … [Read more...]

03/13/13 11:00 PM | filed under: classic modern dance |

Looking Back, Journeying Forward

March 5, 2013 by 2 Comments
Miki Ohara costumed for Martha Graham's Errand into the Maze. Photo: John Deane

The Martha Graham Company, aged 87, is a determined survivor. It has soldiered on past the death of its sole choreographer in 1991, the sale of its 63rd Street building, and a lawsuit over its rights to Graham’s dances. Then, not long after the company took over the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s studios in Westbeth, hurricane Sandy caused flooding in the basement storage space and damaged sets, costumes, and archival materials. Graham might not have approved of all the company’s survival strategies—certainly not of cuts to her … [Read more...]

03/5/13 3:00 PM | filed under: classic modern dance |

The Animals Within

February 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
(L to R) Maggie Thom, Kayvon Pourazar, and Benjamin Asriel in Juliana F. May's Commentary = not thing. Photo: Ian Douglas

Over the years, thoughtful choreographers have turned to nature as a way of thinking about choreography. Isadora Duncan was drawn to wind and wave motion, Martha Graham to the ways in which emotion structures the body, Merce Cunningham to ideas about chance and indeterminacy in nature’s processes. It’s an interesting coincidence that, just recently, two groups—Jennifer Monson/iLAND at the Kitchen, February 14-23, and Juliana F. May/MAYDANCE at New York Live Arts, February 19-23) presented works that delved into the relationship among … [Read more...]

02/24/13 5:53 PM | filed under: Postmodern New York |

Fair Winds from the West

February 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Seth Orza as Balanchine's Apollo with (front to back) Carla Körbes, Maria Chapman, and Lesley Rausch. Photo: Lindsay Thomas

Lincoln Kirstein has written that while the New York State Theater (now the Koch) was under construction, George Balanchine wandered in and saw that the pit would hold no more than 35 musicians. He immediately threatened to withdraw the New York City Ballet as the principal designated tenant. The pit was redesigned to accommodate 70 players. Had Balanchine, to whom music was so important, visited City Center during the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s recent season, he would, I’m sure, have been overjoyed to hear the scores for three of his … [Read more...]

02/22/13 11:58 PM | filed under: ballet |
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