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...]
Filming Dance/Dancing Film
The 2016 Dance on Camera Festival. This year the Dance on Camera Festival celebrated its 44th anniversary and the 60th anniversary of Dance Films Association, which for the past 20 years has been partnering with the Film Society of Lincoln Center in presenting Dance on Camera. As usual, it was astonishing how many screenings, panels, master classes, workshops, and exhibits were fitted into … [Read more...]
BalletBoyz® and Pacific Northwest Ballet
A company from London and one from Seattle visit NYC. History often appears less as a straight line than a looping, occasionally tangling collection of threads. Before Michael Nunn and William Trevitt founded Ballet Boyz in 2000, they were principal dancers with Britain’s Royal Ballet. That’s also the year that Christopher Wheeldon, formerly in that company, stopped dancing in the New York … [Read more...]
Shakespeare Wisely Shaken Up
“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!" howls Shakespeare’s King Lear, defying the storm that crashes around him, as he wanders into outer reaches of his former kingdom. Thrust out by his two conniving daughters and their accomplices, accompanied by his faithful Fool and later by his youngest daughter, Cordelia (whom he had, in his erstwhile pride, gravely wronged), he is losing his wits. But at … [Read more...]
Fire and Ice Mate. . .Can That End Well?
The Kathryn Posin Dance Company performs at 92Y. Think about Swan Lake and numerous 19th-century fairytale ballets—both tragedies and those with happy endings. Did/does anyone question why an “oriental” houri wears pointe shoes or why the vengeful ghost of a jilted bride dances in a moonlit forest with a cohort of similarly affected others? Mostly we accept the story and how it is told. … [Read more...]
From Palestine via Belgium
Badke, a Belgian-Palestinian dance production, comes to New York Live Arts. There is no light in New York Live Arts’ theater, where Badke is beginning. In the darkness, we hear a shout, a strangled cry, a high ululation. Somewhere in front of us, feet are stamping. A rhythmic treading develops and builds into more complicated heard patterns. Then the lights come on, and we see them: ten … [Read more...]
Alwin Nikolais’ Works Revived
The Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company performs at the Joyce Theater through February 14. The man sitting behind me at the Joyce Theater was enthralled by the Alwin Nikolais Celebration. He mentioned a possible connection to Blue Man Group, and dancegoers over the years have seen Nikolais’ influence on Pilobolus, Momix, and the Swiss Group Mummenschanz. But Nikolais (who died in 1993) was a … [Read more...]
Dancing a Fairytale, Its Joys and Tribulations
The New York City Ballet premieres Justin Peck's new ballet and offers works by Thatcher, Binet, Schumacher, and Wheeldon. George Balanchine was reared on story ballets and gradually weaned himself into abstraction, but he never forgot how to tell a good yarn. The New York City Ballet’s vastly gifted young resident choreographer, Justin Peck, was reared on Balanchine and suddenly—without … [Read more...]
Goodbye to All That (Almost)
The Trisha Brown Dance Company presents three of Brown's proscenium works in New York for the last time. Goodbyes are never easy when you love someone. Or something. The Trisha Brown Dance Company’s season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during the last few days of January represents the last time we New Yorkers will see some of Brown’s major works performed by her dancers. Just realizing … [Read more...]