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Three for One

June 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
L to R: Elisa Osborne, Ann Chiaverini, Alexandra Berger, and Emily Gayeski in Dusan Tynek's Widow's Walk. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Zvi Gotheiner, Cherylyn Lavagnino, and Dusan Tynek share a series at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, June 12 through 22. I should have sat down at the computer right after getting home from the opening of Musa! A Festival of Dance with Music at Baruch Performing Arts Center. The inaugural performance was so dense with dancing that keeping my memories of it intact has been a challenge. Also, although the remaining programs in this series (produced by Philip W. Sandstrom and Equilateral Theatre Inc.) showcase no more than three dances … [Read more...]

06/18/13 1:02 PM | filed under: ballet, contemporary dance |

Women in Distress

June 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Members of RIOULT Dance New York in Pascal Rioult's Bolero. Photo: Basil Childers

RIOULT Dance New York premieres "Iphigenia" at the Joyce Theater, June 5 through 9. Pascal Rioult was an important member of Martha Graham’s company during the last part of her life. Three years after her death in 1991, he founded RIOULT Dance New York and built it into a prospering entity, with performances in the U.S. and abroad, a wide-ranging outreach program to introduce children and adults to modern dance, and year-round health insurance for his dancers. His choreography has been warmly received, and the audience for the … [Read more...]

06/8/13 5:36 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

Awaken to Life!

May 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Joshua Green in Like Lazarus did (LLD 4/30). Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Stephen Petronio Company at the Joyce Theater, April 30 through May 5, 2013 Over a hundred black-clad members of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City form a V around the corner of the Joyce Theater—some on 19th Street, some on 8th Avenue; over a hundred pairs of eyes focus on composer Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott), who, shielded by a parasol, is playing guitar alongside trumpeter C.J. Camerieri and violinist Rob Moose. “Come out!” sing the kids in sweet harmony to a burgeoning crowd of spectators—most of whom have come to the … [Read more...]

05/5/13 11:07 AM | filed under: contemporary dance |

For Eyes and Ears

April 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Rita Donohue and Mikhail Baryshnikov (foreground) and (L to R) Aaron Loux, Dallas McMurray, Maile Okamura, and (half hidden) Amber Star Merkens. Photo: Stephanie Berger

Mark Morris Dance Group. James and Martha Duffy Performance Space, Mark Morris Dance Center, Brooklyn, New York. April 3 through 14. You can’t predict much about a dance by Mark Morris. There’s no doubt that he responds to music and —with love and respect—choreographs that response into what he hears. He acknowledges with great sensitivity a composer’s tempi and structures and atmosphere, but you never know what else the sounds will trigger. Antonin Dvorák’s Bagatelles for two violins, cello, and harmonium, Op. 47 (1878) … [Read more...]

04/7/13 7:13 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

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 |

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 |

Erotic Geometry

February 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Cristian Laverde König eyes Abby Roesner. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu

When I look closely at a broccoli floret, I don’t ponder fractal geometry; I may marvel at images derived from Fibonacci sequences, but I don’t pretend to understand Walsh functions. Choreographer Karole Armitage might consider me an intellectual wimp. Her Three Theories premiered in 2010 at the World Science Festival. Although Armitage’s new Mechanics of the Dance Machine at New York Live Arts (1/31-2/2 and 2/7-9) attests to her ongoing fascination with physics, you don’t need to see her sources reflected in the choreography in … [Read more...]

02/7/13 3:25 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

When An Artist’s Newest Works Are Her Last. . .

February 3, 2013 by 2 Comments
(L to R): Stuart Shugg, Nicholas Strafaccia, Neal Beasely, and Samuel Wentz. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu

On Thursday, January 31, the second day of the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it was announced that Brown, because of health problems, had retired as artistic director of the company she founded over forty years ago, and would choreograph no more dances. Consider these words bordered in black—mourning for the works she might have continued to give us. Although many in the BAM audience that night had been expecting just such an announcement, most did not yet know of it. The occasion was festive. The … [Read more...]

02/3/13 11:46 PM | filed under: contemporary dance |

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 |

Slow Down; Now Breathe

January 22, 2013 by 1 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 |
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