“Ooh that feels so good!” The speaker was not involved in a semi-pornographic film. She was a teenager watching a filmed pas de deux at a summer dance festival years ago. Others shushed her; this was art! Indoctrinated, did they even notice that the male dancer, hoisting his partner overhead, had placed one hand on her crotch? Please be forbearing when I tell you that this memory edged into my … [Read more...]
A Ballerina Adventures in Postmodern Worlds
It wouldn’t be entirely fair to call Sara Mearns a force of nature, given her discipline, her skills as a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, and her interest in exploring new possibilities. However having seen her perform August 14-18 in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Theater, I’m strenuously tempted. The program titled “Sara Mearns: Beyond Ballet” features her in five works. … [Read more...]
Paul Taylor (1930-2018)
When Paul Taylor died of renal failure on Wednesday, August 29th, and I was coping with that news, I started to think not just of the 140 dances he made during his remarkable career, but of his connection to the great figures of 20th-century dance whose pantheon he joins. As a Juilliard student, he met many of them and appeared during the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in a piece … [Read more...]
Excavate, Reassemble, Create
Netta Yerushalmy premieres her Paramodernities at Jacob's Pillow What? My name listed in the Jacob’s Pillow program among the twenty-four people whom Netta Yerushalmy was gracious enough to thank for the “insights” they contributed to her Paramodernities? Quick search through my e-mail. Yes, in 2013, Yerushalmy (who had been a student in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts when I was on its … [Read more...]
Martha Graham: Sacred and Profane
The Martha Graham Dance Company at New York City Center, April 11 through 14 I assume that Isamu Noguchi heard at least some of Carlos Surinach’s sly, scorching music for Martha Graham’s Embattled Garden in rehearsal before he designed the scenery that would be so crucial to the 1958 dance. The garden is the one we’re told existed in Eden. No greenery for Noguchi (and not much innocence in … [Read more...]
Juilliard Dancers Predicting Spring
Watching the Juilliard School’s annual Spring Dances, I think of young racehorses turned loose on a course. The Juilliard performers aren’t as young as those ballet dancers who join companies while still in high school; after four years at the school, they’ll graduate with BFAs. However, all that they’ve learned, and are still learning, is on the line in these performances, and often, they’re … [Read more...]
Paul Taylor and His Cohort
Paul Taylor American Modern Dance at Lincoln Center through March 25th. I think I finally got it straight: Paul Taylor American Modern Dance is a presenting organization and the Paul Taylor Dance Company is one of the organizations it presents and for which it commissions new work. (There. That wasn’t hard, was it?) During its ongoing season at Lincoln Center’s former New York State … [Read more...]
Taylor Made
Paul Taylor American Modern Dance at Lincoln Center, March 6 through 25. When Paul Taylor’s Roses premiered in 1985, fake petals drifted down onto the City Center stage just before the lights went out on his sweet-tempered choreography. No such sprinkling occurred on the second evening of Paul Taylor American Modern Dance’s 2018 three-week season at the former New York State Theater. Would … [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...]
Speaking of Gender. . .
Richard Move and MoveOpolis! performs at New York Live Arts. I have warm, twenty-year-old memories of a cold corner in New York’s meatpacking district (you entered the funky, all red nightclub called Mother on Washington Street and exited on 14th Street). On certain weekends, lines waited to get into the latest iteration of Martha@Mother, the variety show co-produced by Richard Move and … [Read more...]