Compagnie Marie Chouinard performs at Jacob's Pillow, July 19 through 23 The immaculately groomed women in the above photograph don’t look much like the dancers who took over the Ted Shawn Theater at Jacob’s Pillow to perform Marie Chouinard’s 24 Preludes by Chopin (1999). The six female members of her Montreal-based company still wear Liz Vandel’s translucent black leotards with what looks … [Read more...]
Archives for 2017
Consistency within Variety
Jessica Lang Dance performs at Jacob's Pillow July 5 through 9. Jessica Lang graduated from the Juilliard School and danced in Twyla Tharp’s company for two years, but performing wasn’t enough for her. However, she didn’t start her choreographic career by founding a company bearing her name. Beginning in 1999, she started making works for ballet companies worldwide —ninety-five to date. She … [Read more...]
Dancing with Lou Harrison
The Mark Morris Dance Group celebrates the centennial of composer Lou Harrison's birth. In 1991, the composer Lou Harrison wrote a piece for gamelan and harp and called it In Honor of the Divine Mr. Handel. On June 28, 2017, in Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Mark Morris Dance Group premiered a work, Numerator, set to Harrison’s Varied Trio for violin, piano,and percussion. The title of … [Read more...]
Four Companies, Six Dances
Karole Armitage, Jaqulyn Buglisi, Elisa Monte, and Jennifer Muller join forces. As the intermission is winding down, and enthusiastic spectators have resumed their seats, the five choreographers presenting works this June evening walk onto the New Live Arts stage and introduce themselves to us: Karole Armitage, Jaqulyn Buglisi, Elisa Monte, Jennifer Muller, and Tiffany Rea-Fisher … [Read more...]
Dancing into Summer
Jacob's Pillow opens its season with a Gala performance. It was only when I was leaving the Jacob’s Pillow Gala that I started to consider this dance establishment’s 85th anniversary celebration in terms of transformation and the breaking of boundaries. It could have rained and didn’t, but there were umbrellas-in-waiting in the bags we were given, also pens (which could come in handy for … [Read more...]
Artifacts Reinvented
Sally Silvers' three new works at Roulette, June 15 through 17. I love pondering the palimpsest that is New York City. Sometimes when a building’s skeleton is all that’s left, you lay what you know of its past over its present. The eye-level, horizontal strip of a Bleecker Street window that once displayed antique toys has vanished under the big-deal plate glass that’s there now, fronting … [Read more...]
Circles of Life
Tamar Rogoff's Grand Rounds at La MaMa, April 27 through May 14. Choreographer Tamar Rogoff grew up in the 1950s reading Helen Wells’ mystery novels about a nurse named Cherry Ames, who’d risk the wrath of the doctors she served by resourcefully breaking the rules in order to save a patient’s life, if no one else was around. From Cherry Ames, Student Nurse (1943), Nurse Ames went on being … [Read more...]
New York City Ballet premieres a New Ratmansky Work
New York City Ballet’s 2017 Spring Gala is a testament to the acumen of the company’s supporters. Beautifully dressed people are provided with champagne in advance of the performance and dinner after it, but no speeches this time, no films, and no intermissions. And after those assembled have watched Peter Martins’ Jeu de Cartes, the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain, and … [Read more...]
Pushing the Past Forward
The Limón Dance Company performs at the Joyce Theater, May 2 through 7. José Limón might have been a fine architect had he chosen that profession instead of dance. Beginning his career in the company led by Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, he inherited some of their principles of movement and, shortly, a mentor: Humphrey herself. And during the latter part of his career, when he had a … [Read more...]
So this Horse Came from India. . .
A production of From the Horse's Mouth celebrates Indian dance at New York's 14th Street Y. Next year, From the Horse’s Mouth will celebrate its twentieth anniversary. Since its debut at the Joyce Soho, over a thousand people connected with dance (twenty or more at a time) have performed in this peripatetic structured improvisation, conceived and directed by Tina Croll and Jamie Cunningham. … [Read more...]