Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance continues its Lincoln Center run through April 3. In a program essay by Susan Yung for the Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance season (through April 3), guest choreographer Doug Elkins mentions that Taylor’s Esplanade was the first dance he ever saw on PBS’s “Dance in America” and acknowledges its influence on him. Not that you’d guess it at the opening … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2016
Taking Folk Dancing into Today’s World
Tina Croll + Company performs in New York with Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band. I haven’t seen Tina Croll’s choreography for quite a while, although she and I were early members of Dance Theater Workshop, and I’ve performed in several versions of From the Horse’s Mouth, a structured improvisation involving text and dance that she devised with Jamie Cunningham (there’s one coming up in honor … [Read more...]
Paul Taylor’s Dancers on an Adventure
Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance presents it New York season, March 15-April 3. Last year inaugurated the transformation of the Paul Taylor Dance Company into Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance. During that season, Shen Wei’s Rite was performed by his own company, and the José Limón company danced Doris Humphrey’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. During the company’s current two-week … [Read more...]
Anna Sokolow’s Dark Spirit
Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble revives three Anna Sokolow works. I’ve told this story before, but it slid into my mind again as I left the 14th Street Y after seeing the Sokolow Dance/Theatre Ensemble perform works by Anna Sokolow dating from 1968. About a decade earlier, I, a newly minted member of Juilliard Dance Theater with a knee problem, was watching Sokolow choreograph a piece for … [Read more...]
Tracing Bloodlines
The Stephen Petronio Company premieres a new work and revives one by Trisha Brown. Stephen Petronio’s five-year project, Bloodlines, pays homage to his heritage in the most loving and laborious of ways. He introduced it last year by having his dancers learn and perform Merce Cunningham’s great 1968 RainForest. This year, for the company’s season at the Joyce Theater, they tackled a work by … [Read more...]
Dancing in Places
PLATFORM 2016: A Body in Places (February 17-March 23). Did you happen to see Eiko in the summer of 2014 when she danced in Fukushima, Japan, the site of the fallible nuclear plant damaged in the 2011 earthquake and the terrible consequences to the people and the territory around it? Or on Governor’s Island that same summer? Did you see her in Valparaiso, Chile this past January? Maybe you … [Read more...]