New York City Ballet presents its annual Fall Gala at Lincoln Center. “Practice makes perfect” may be a mantra for dancers and choreographers. It also describes how smoothly and fleetly the New York City Ballet’s 2017 Fall Gala—its sixth pairing choreographers with fashion designers—leapt onto and off the stage at Lincoln Center during the second week of the company’s season. Last year five … [Read more...]
Bracing Winds from Miami
Miami City Ballet bursts into Lincoln Center. Ten years ago this summer, Miami City Ballet performed at Jacob’s Pillow. This is what I wrote in the Village Voice: “Miami City Ballet’s dancers tear into Balanchine’s works with such appetite for speed and scale that you wonder how they stay in control. Their legacy is clear. They came to Balanchine through Miami’s artistic director Edward … [Read more...]
Another Rite
The Martha Graham Dance Company dances The Rite of Spring and Nacho Duato's Rust at Jacob’s Pillow, August 21-25. I like to imagine that at least once a month this year, somewhere in the world, a dance company and/or an orchestra has been thundering away at Igor Stravinsky’s masterpiece Le Sacre du Printemps, Obviously, I’m no statistician, but it does seem that, in 2013, the centenary of … [Read more...]
Fair Winds from the West
Lincoln Kirstein has written that while the New York State Theater (now the Koch) was under construction, George Balanchine wandered in and saw that the pit would hold no more than 35 musicians. He immediately threatened to withdraw the New York City Ballet as the principal designated tenant. The pit was redesigned to accommodate 70 players. Had Balanchine, to whom music was so important, … [Read more...]
Men at Work
Neal Beasley and Bradley Teal Ellis staged their joint appearance on one of Dance New Amsterdam’s SPLICE series more intimately than other choreographers sharing a SPLICE program have done. They took the word “splice” seriously—dividing Ellis’s (american) guilt and Beasley’s every adam belonging to me into three parts, and splicing them into each other in alternating segments. They evidently saw, … [Read more...]
Morris, the Night, and the Music
When it comes to selecting music to spark choreography, Mark Morris is an omnivore. He gives loving, uncondescending attention to popular songs like George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Jerome Kern’s “Two Little Bluebirds, or (once) Yoko Ono’s “Dogtown,” as well as digging into scores by Bach, Stravinsky, Schumann and other musical giants. To Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, … [Read more...]