Danspace Project presents Julie McMillan in Benjamin Kimitch's KO-BU. Waiting for the crosstown bus that will taken me home from St. Mark’s church, I think only about what I have just seen: Danspace Project’s presentation of Benjamin Kimitch’s uncannily beautiful Ko-bu, performed by—embodied by—Julie McMillan, his creative collaborator. A little later, I can link the experience to that of … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2017
Martha Graham Rediviva
Martha Graham Dance Company at the Joyce Theater, February 14 through 26. I’ve already written about the three new works that the Martha Graham Dance Company has acquired (http://www.artsjournal.com/dancebeat/2017/02/the-martha-graham-dance-companys-new-visions/). Of the remaining pieces programmed for the company’s season at the Joyce Theater, one is Nacho Duato’s 2013 Rust for five of the … [Read more...]
The Martha Graham Dance Company’s New Visions
The Martha Graham Dance Company commissions works by Annie-B Parson, Pontus Lidberg, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. There’s no point in wondering how Martha Graham would react to her seeing her company onstage today (Rant and rave? Smile approvingly? Wade in and make changes?). She disowned many of the 191 dances that she choreographed during her creative lifetime (1926-1991); others were … [Read more...]
What Will Have Happened in the Woods?
Vim Vigor Dance Company presents the New York premiere of Shannon Gillen's FUTURE PERFECT. The woods are full of shadows and lurking danger. We’ve known that ever since we first heard about Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. Too, anyone sitting in the Baruch Performing Arts Center’s black-box theater who saw Shannon Gillen’s Vim Vigor Dance Company perform her Separati last … [Read more...]
Lincoln Center 50 Years On – An Experiment In American Dance?
Reading Joseph Horowitz’s essay, “Bing, Bernstein, Balanchine,” and then re-reading the passages that apply to ballet at Lincoln Center, I’m suddenly thrown back to the 1960s and a different view of tradition and innovation. As a modern dancer in New York, I welcomed the founding of the New York State Council on the Arts in 1961 and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965. Would … [Read more...]
Merce in Nancy
CCN - Ballet de Lorraine presents three works from its repertory at the Joyce Theater. In 1984, France’s Ministry of Culture decentralized dance. No more choreographers holed up in Paris while the rest of the country, for the most part, did without. To date, France has nineteen Centres Chorégraphiques Nationaux, almost all of them headed by choreographers of consequence. The Ballet de … [Read more...]
Meetings Across Space and Time
Douglas Dunn + Dancers' Antipodes comes to roost in Danspace St. Mark's. If Douglas Dunn could see himself from behind, would his mind flip as well? This is not the kind of question most choreographers ask themselves. He does. Nor might many be tempted to name a dance of theirs Antipodes and then consider the many ways in which that term can be defined—say, as opposites, congenial or in … [Read more...]
From London to New Jersey
The Richard Alston Dance Company at Montclair State University's Peak Performances, February 2 through 5. What seems different? I’m sitting in the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, waiting for the Richard Alston Dance Company to begin dancing. Having for some years attended events presented at Montclair State’s Peak Performances series, I’m now part of a full house of … [Read more...]
When the Last is not the Last
Batsheva Dance Company, live and on film, performs in New York. The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House is packed —the orchestra, the first balcony, the second balcony, all. The curtain rises, and thousands of eyes converge on a single person moving through time, frozen in space. On top of a slightly raised platform that crosses the back of the stage, a woman is running on … [Read more...]