Jessica Lang Dance performs at Jacob's Pillow July 5 through 9. Jessica Lang graduated from the Juilliard School and danced in Twyla Tharp’s company for two years, but performing wasn’t enough for her. However, she didn’t start her choreographic career by founding a company bearing her name. Beginning in 1999, she started making works for ballet companies worldwide —ninety-five to date. She … [Read more...]
Dancing into Summer
Jacob's Pillow opens its season with a Gala performance. It was only when I was leaving the Jacob’s Pillow Gala that I started to consider this dance establishment’s 85th anniversary celebration in terms of transformation and the breaking of boundaries. It could have rained and didn’t, but there were umbrellas-in-waiting in the bags we were given, also pens (which could come in handy for … [Read more...]
New York City Ballet premieres a New Ratmansky Work
New York City Ballet’s 2017 Spring Gala is a testament to the acumen of the company’s supporters. Beautifully dressed people are provided with champagne in advance of the performance and dinner after it, but no speeches this time, no films, and no intermissions. And after those assembled have watched Peter Martins’ Jeu de Cartes, the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, and … [Read more...]
A Small Company with Big Ideas
The New York Theatre Ballet performs at New York Live Arts, March 1 through 4. Vaslav Nijinsky must have been charmed by ancient Greek vases when he choreographed his first ballet, L’Après-midi d’un faune, in 1912. Inspired by Stéphan Mallarmé’s poem of that name and Claude Debussy’s musical response to it (Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune), he, however, depicted the nymphs and faun who … [Read more...]
Merce in Nancy
CCN - Ballet de Lorraine presents three works from its repertory at the Joyce Theater. In 1984, France’s Ministry of Culture decentralized dance. No more choreographers holed up in Paris while the rest of the country, for the most part, did without. To date, France has nineteen Centres Chorégraphiques Nationaux, almost all of them headed by choreographers of consequence. The Ballet de … [Read more...]
Dancers on the Rampage
New York City Ballet premieres new works by Justin Peck and Pontus Lidberg. When a dance really fascinates me, I wish either that I could immediately see it all over again or that I could be instantly at home, hugging it to myself and processing my memories. Justin Peck’s new The Times Are Racing for the New York City Ballet made me feel this way. It’s set to Dan Deacon’s vivid, changeable, … [Read more...]
Glittering Athletes
Complexions Contemporary Ballet performs at the Joyce Theater, January 24 through February 5 Some dances aim to hit you over the head—not too hard, just enough to get your adrenaline rushing. Look at the dancers: strong, confident, beautiful, they can do anything. When they swing their legs into the air, a tree could fall. Their idea of a rest is shooting off a few very slightly less … [Read more...]
Moving Architecture
American Ballet Theatre presents ballets by Tharp, Lang, and Millepied. Goethe once wrote this: “Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music.” For Havelock Ellis—one of the writers on the arts that Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey found inspiring early in the twentieth century—dance and architecture were the sources on which the visual arts were built. Watching one of … [Read more...]
They Could Have Danced All Night
New York City Ballet opens its fall season (September 20 to October 16) with four new ballets. The New York City Ballet’s gala performances are intriguing phenomena—so many gowns trailing hazardous trains during the pre-performance cocktail party on the second floor promenade, so many tiny, slightly slippery hors d’oeuvres, and at the same time such pride and good spirits among those … [Read more...]
Borne on a West Coast Breeze
The Pacific Northwest Ballet performs during Jacob's Pillow's last week of the summer. It takes more than a moderate climate, ocean breezes, and lots of rain for a ballet company to flourish, and the Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet yields a well-chosen repertory and dancers from all parts of the U.S. and beyond, who make skill and precision look chosen and invested in, rather than … [Read more...]