The Martha Graham Dance Company performs at City Center Erick Hawkins once claimed that he never knew that Martha Graham, his partner, lover, and onetime wife was fifteen years older than he. She knew it, however (and habitually chopped several years off her age when documentation was needed). In 1946, a period when he and she were temporarily on the outs, she choreographed Cave of the … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2016
Embodying The Erased Father
Nora Chipaumire premieres a new work at Montclair State University's Peak Performances. You go out to Montclair State University to attend the world premiere of Nora Chipaumire’s portrait of myself as my father on Peak Peformances’ 2015-2016 season, and note that Spring is greening the lawns. The immense construction machines that are ripping up turf and erecting buildings sit brooding and … [Read more...]
Bracing Winds from Miami
Miami City Ballet bursts into Lincoln Center. Ten years ago this summer, Miami City Ballet performed at Jacob’s Pillow. This is what I wrote in the Village Voice: “Miami City Ballet’s dancers tear into Balanchine’s works with such appetite for speed and scale that you wonder how they stay in control. Their legacy is clear. They came to Balanchine through Miami’s artistic director Edward … [Read more...]
Flesh and the Gaze
Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner's Eskasizer, at The Boiler February 26 through April 3. Over the centuries, women’s bodies have been compared to many things. The amorous speaker in the Bible’s “Song of Songs” hymns his beloved’s breasts as being “like two young roes that are twins which feed among the lilies.” (He also likens her teeth to a flock of evenly shorn sheep). But how closely … [Read more...]