Mark Morris directs and choreographs Handel's Acis and Galatea for Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival. It is beguiling to imagine George Frideric Handel’s pastoral opera Acis and Galatea receiving its first performance at the Duke of Chandos’s mansion on the terrace overlooking the gardens and their newly installed fountain. If the part about the terrace were true, guests at this 1718 … [Read more...]
Enter, Pursued by History
John Heginbotham premieres his full-evening Chalk and Soot at Jacob's Pillow. No artist can entirely escape history. Unacknowledged, it trails behind him/her. Occasionally it blows around the artist’s ankles, occasioning thoughts. What was that? Where did I get it? Is it something barely remembered or something better chopped off? John Heginbotham doesn’t deny the influences of his years … [Read more...]
Foot Music
Dorrance Dance taps out a world premiere at Jacob's Pillow July 16 through 27. These days, we’re all wired. Or wirelessly connected. Sometimes walking down the street, I play a private game called “What would Mozart think?” Would he, for instance, worry that people walking along the street with things in their ears, talking loudly into the air, were lunatics? On the other hand, would he get … [Read more...]
Footloose and Fancy Free
New York City Ballet's Daniel Ulbricht brings a cadre of his peers to Jacob's Pillow Touring with a small pick-up company of colleagues drawn from a major ballet company must be akin to masterminding a working vacation with your pals. What will you need in the way of costumes and sets and, since you won’t be able to carry live musicians along, well-made CDs? What will you need to do to … [Read more...]
Voyaging to a New Land
Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heels Performance Group presents Moses(es) at Jacob's Pillow. The first event you see in Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group's Moses(es) at Jacob’s Pillow is Reggie Wilson getting up the nerve to say something. He stands in the Doris Duke Studio Theater and looks the audience over—checking out the spectators, smiling nervously, waiting for. . .what? He pulls … [Read more...]
Flying On
The Trisha Brown Dance Company moves through its final three years. It has only been a few months since I wrote about the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and here I am writing again. Ever since it was announced last year that health issues had caused Brown to retire as company head and sole choreographer and that the dancers were embarking on a three-year farewell tour, I tend to think, “It … [Read more...]
Aging, as in Fine Wine
Jacob's Pillow opens its summer season with a solo performance by Carmen de Lavallade. The Gala that opened the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s summer season was full of goodies—and by that I don’t mean just the dinner and the whooping it up on the dance floor. The program opened in the Ted Shawn Theater with the 22 students in the Pillow School’s Ballet Program performing an astounding … [Read more...]
Make That Three
Jacqulyn Buglisi, Elisa Monte, and Jennifer Muller share a program at New York Live Arts, June 18-21. If you’re wondering about people who have had long, productive careers in dance, you might want to consider Jacqulyn Buglisi, Elisa Monte, and Jennifer Muller (note the alphabetical order). First came their years as marvelous dancers—Muller in José Limón’s company and then in Louis Falco’s, … [Read more...]
From Ashes to True Love
American Ballet Theatre mounts Frederick Ashton's Cinderella during its spring season. It’s rare that a dance review starts out with praise for a company’s artistic director, but I need to congratulate Kevin McKenzie. In the last two decades, “his” company, American Ballet Theatre, has commissioned two new ballets based on the tale of Cinderella. (McKenzie himself danced in Mikhail … [Read more...]
Diary of an Image
DD Dorvillier adds a new work to her month-long reassessment of her history in dance. DD Dorvillier always seems, in her choreographic projects, to be testing something. Perhaps it’s the audience’s perception of dance, or her own. She probes into the interactions of light and darkness, into the effect of space on sound vibrations, into the interference of objects on live dancers, and more. … [Read more...]