Martha Graham Dance Company / City Center, NYC / April 14-25, 2004 If a long winter—meteorological or psychological—has scuttled your courage, you might want to check out a couple of terrific Martha Graham dances now being performed in repertory at the City Center. Cave of the Heart and Hérodiade are part of the Greek cycle that Graham created in the 1940s, spurred by the period’s newly awakened appetite for a psychoanalytical view of classical mythology. Both pieces present a pair of women, each tremendously strong in her own way, who … [Read more...]

North Carolina Dance Theatre / Joyce Theater, NYC / April 13-18, 2004 “It’s a puzzlement,” says the monarch in The King and I. Having witnessed one of North Carolina Dance Theatre’s rare New York performances, I can only agree with the king. The company is led by a pair of former New York City Ballet principals, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride—the latter one of the great dancers of the twentieth century, the originator and/or brilliant interpreter of many a Balanchine role. Why, I wonder, did this energetic and engaging … [Read more...]

Compagnie Maguy Marin / Joyce Theater, NYC / April 6-11, 2004 A curtain of flexible strips in carnival colors screens the three walls of the stage like a vertical Venetian blind. Nine dancers—first one, then several—emerge from behind this pliant barrier, then, just as mysteriously, vanish back into the corridors it shields. Suddenly revealed, then quickly concealed, again and again, they’re figures in events without warning that occur in a territory in flux. Strong, swift, no-nonsense types (trained for the dance and dressed for the … [Read more...]