Seeing Things

New York City Ballet:  All-Wheeldon program / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / January 28, 2012 He started out as a prodigy.  He got better and better at what he was good at:  the architectural organization of a dance; the seamless incorporation of non-traditional dance movements into the classical matrix he had inherited; a deep understanding of the partnership of dance and music. Born in England in 1973, Christopher Wheeldon began studying dance at 8, entered the Royal Ballet School at 11, and graduated into the … [Read more...]

Weegee:  “Murder Is My Business” / ICP, NYC / through September 2; Bill Cunningham:  “On the Street” / weekly in the New York Times online Is it too strange that, seeing the latest Weegee exhibition (subject:  violence), I thought of Bill Cunningham (subject:  fashion)? Weegee (the moniker Arthur Fellig gave himself) was, as you may well know, the mid-twentieth-century tabloid photographer who turned his genre into an art form.  A retrospective, accurately titled “Murder is My Business,” is at ICP through September 2.  … [Read more...]

Merce Cunningham Dance Company / Park Avenue Armory, NYC / December 29-31, 2011 A Merce Cunningham Event, as the choreographer described it in a program note, is a performance of about 90 minutes, without intermission, “consist[ing] of complete dances, excerpts of dances from the repertory, and often new sequences for the particular performance and place, with the possibility of several separate activities happening at the same time to allow not so much an evening of dances as the experience of dance.” In the course of his career, … [Read more...]

Merce Cunningham Dance Company / BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn, NY / December 7-10, 2011 In addition to showing us wonders we'd never even dreamed of, Merce Cunningham (1919-2009), that inscrutable genius of modern dance, taught us a tough, valuable lesson: Dance is not forever. Its very evanescence increases its intensity at the moment of performance. It may register profoundly with the spectator but it inevitably disappears. Cunningham knew this and he made his plans. Members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Photo: … [Read more...]

Angel Reapers, by Martha Clarke and Alfred Uhry / Joyce Theater, NYC / November 29 - December 11, 2011 The oddest thing about Martha Clarke and Alfred Uhry's Angel Reapers is that it has no plot. This despite the fact that Uhry is a widely respected American playwright, as his Pulitzer, Oscar, and Tony awards attest. Clarke herself, a founding member of the tremendously popular Pilobolus, is widely known for haunting dance-theater pieces, in which her vivid imagination and penchant for the perverse reveal the world's underside. A MacArthur … [Read more...]

New York City Ballet: The Nutcracker / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / November 25 - December 31, 2010 God Is in the Details: George Balanchine, creator of the New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker, coaching the smallest of the toy soldiers at a dress rehearsal Courtesy of the New York City Ballet archives With its premiere in 1954, George Balanchine's version of The Nutcracker, choreographed for the New York City Ballet and set, of course, to Tchaikovsky's eloquent score, inaugurated a craze for the Christmastide ballet … [Read more...]

American Ballet Theatre / City Center, NYC / November 8-13, 2011 This season's gala-event costumes for women of a certain income emphasize cascading ruffles in weak-willed pastels or glowing jewel tones. The men continue to sport black-tie mufti with almost no rakish variation on the theme. Expense is evident, as is the eternal question of hoi polloi concerning the gowns with obviously crushable skirts, How does she sit down in it? Despite the War: American Ballet Theatre's Luciana Paris in Paul Taylor's Company B Photo: Gene … [Read more...]

Duŝan Týnek Dance Theatre / Tribeca PAC, NYC / October 27-29; November 3-5, 2011 Duŝan Týnek Dance Theatre Photo: Julieta Cervantes Seeing the Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre, recently at Tribeca PAC, in the second of the two programs it offered, made me wonder why the standing of its marvelous choreographer hasn't graduated from "promising" to top-of-the-line. If he were working for a big institutionalized company like ABT or New York City Ballet, he might blow contenders like Brian Reeder and even Benjamin Millepied off the … [Read more...]

Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion / Danspace Project, NYC / November 3-5, 2011 Shadowplay: Jonathan Burrows (l.) and Matteo Fargion (r.) in their Both Sitting Duet Photo: Herman Sirgeloos When the presumably odd couple Jonathan Burrows (dancer and choreographer) and Matteo Fargion (musician and composer) played the Kitchen back in 2004 in their Both Sitting Duet I titled my review (lots of description, some analysis, intimations of enchantment) "Less Is More." Seven years later, they're back in New York for three performances at … [Read more...]