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Tell Me a Story, and Another and Another

June 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Emily Pope-Blackman (L) and Petra van Noort in Tiffany Mills' The Feast (Part 1). Photo: Julie Lemberger

The Tiffany Mills Company presents two new works at BAM Fishman. Remember when dancers rarely talked onstage?  No? Then you’re probably still in your twenties. Beginning in the 1980s, when narrative and emotion began to slip  back into contemporary American dance and knock its movement-and-form-only stance askew, some choreographers tackled stories that couldn’t be told through dancing alone. Personal narratives, revamped fairy tales, social and political messages—all needed the spoken word. In Tiffany Mills’s Berries and … [Read more...]

06/2/13 1:16 PM | filed under: dance theater |

A Change in the Wind

May 7, 2013 by 1 Comment
Brandin Steffensen, cross-dressed. Photo: Julie Lemberger

Tamar Rogoff’s Summer’s Different in La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart’s Theater, April 24 through May 12 A family’s summer day on the beach, what could be finer?  Of course, someone might get  sunburned, someone might drop her hot dog in the sand, someone might swim out a little too far. There could be bickering. Tears saltier than usual could be shed. But still. . .a cloudless sky, blue waves. That’s the kind of day it seems to be in Tamar Rogoff’s startling new work, Summer’s Different. When all its five characters are posed … [Read more...]

05/7/13 8:43 PM | filed under: dance theater |

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 |

Lie There My Art

December 9, 2012 by 2 Comments
Prospero (Eric Beauchesne) regarded by some of the "replicas" at the end of Kidd Pivot's The Tempest Replica by Crystal Pite. Photo: Geörg Baumann

I don’t think of myself as purist about Shakespeare. I’m fine with Laurence Olivier inserting a line from Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine into his Henry V film and loved David Gordon’s Dancing Henry V.  I’m okay with the 1995 film of Richard III that equates its murderous dynasties with the Third Reich.  I relished a years-ago Shakespeare and Company production of Much Ado About Nothing that was laid in a Banana Republic, and I tolerated (just) Kenneth Branagh’s presentation of Love’s Labour Lost as a musical. I’ve sat … [Read more...]

12/9/12 12:54 PM | filed under: dance theater |

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 |

There’s No Problem Like Maria

August 25, 2012 by 2 Comments
Love at last! Meghan Merrill as Maria and Daniel Charon as von Trapp. Photo: Taylor Crichton, courtesy of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

So long, Fräulein Maria. Also farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye. Not au revoir, but (gulp) adieu.  I’m not talking about the heroine played by Julie Andrews in the film based on the Broadway show, The Sound of Music; I refer to Doug Elkins’s fabulously funny and adorable, gender-corkscrewing take on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s beloved creation.  Fräulein Maria’s touring days are done. It will disappear after its last performance (Sunday, September  26th) during the final week of Jacob’s Pillow’s 80th Anniversary Season … [Read more...]

08/25/12 10:41 AM | filed under: dance theater |

Does My Beginning Match Your Ending?

June 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Framed: the cast of Beginning of the End of the. . . (not in costume). Photo: Andre Eccles

Ever since the 1970s, David Gordon has been educating us into seeing that there are always two sides to everything (perhaps simultaneously), that repetition can reveal change, that words are devious game-players, and that you could be your own grandma. In his dance-theater works, where process and product often dance in lockstep, a performer may comment on what she/he—or another performer—is doing. To construct his fascinating, brain-tossing new venture, Beginning of the End of the. . . (at the Joyce Soho through June 30), Gordon has … [Read more...]

06/12/12 3:51 PM | filed under: dance theater |

Jump for Mother Ann’s Love

December 2, 2011 by 3 Comments
Asli Bulbul Receiving Heaven's Gift

What fascinates people about the Shakers—members of religious communities that settled in New England in the late 18th century, proselytized, expanded, and began to wither a hundred or so years later?  We marvel at the austerely beautiful furniture they made, their ingenuity, and the fact that they considered drawing, singing, and dancing gifts from God that were to be practiced freely and diligently—all that and more, but what seems to boggle many contemporary minds is that Shakers were celibate. Doris Humphrey barely hinted at … [Read more...]

12/2/11 10:15 AM | filed under: dance theater |

Wandering Down Memory Lane

October 31, 2011 by 2 Comments
Esther Balfe in I don't believe in outer space. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

William Forsythe is an innovator. I doubt that fact is even up for debate among those who adore his work, those who loathe it, and those who simply scratch their heads over it. His post post-Balanchine ballets, his installations, his recent theater pieces, and his 2004 computer app, Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, have influenced choreographers, performers, teachers, and thinkers outside the dance world. Scholars in Europe and the American continent chew over his work in the light of the ideas he has … [Read more...]

10/31/11 9:01 AM | filed under: dance theater |

Bloodless Bacchanale

October 29, 2011 by 2 Comments
Frances Chiaverini in Luca Veggetti's Bacchae (outdoor shot). Photo: Kyle Froman

How does a choreographer tell a story in dance without telling a story? This question hangs over Luca Veggetti’s take on Euripides’ The Bacchae for Morphoses. The company co-founded by Christopher Wheeldon and Lourdes Lopez has, since Wheeldon’s departure, reconfigured itself as a pick-up ensemble whose profile changes yearly with a new resident artistic director and new dancers. Veggetti’s Bacchae (which premiered at the Joyce Theater October 25 through 30) marks the debut of Morphoses’ new identity (Veggetti will be succeeded in … [Read more...]

10/29/11 3:15 PM | filed under: dance theater |
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