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...]
Legends and Visionaries
New York Theatre Ballet performs a new work and a classic at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Young choreographers are usually advised to start out “small.” You know, try their wings. Diana Byer, the artistic director of the fine little New York Theatre Ballet, took the opposite tack. According to an interview with Steven Melendez, a dancer in NYTB, and Zhong-Jing Fang, a member of … [Read more...]
Dancing Alone and Together
Wendy Whelan, Brian Brooks, and Brooklyn Rider at Jacob's Pillow, July 7-31 “Adventuress” isn’t a word I’d use to describe the marvelous dancer Wendy Whelan. Not because it’s a politically incorrect term in today’s porous and egalitarian vision of gender, but because it conjures up a glamorous, unprincipled woman using her charms in order to fleece men of their money or marry them. No, … [Read more...]
Connecting and Levering
The Bereishit Dance Company from South Korea performs at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. I have long been an admirer of Korean traditional dance. When singer Seo-hee Lee walked into Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater, she was wearing a billowing white and pink hanbok. Dong-sik Lim and Sung-gun Park, the other two musicians preparing to accompany Seoul’s Bereishit Dance Company’s … [Read more...]
From Florida with Skill and Devotion
The Sarasota Ballet brings Ashton classics and 21st-century ballets to Jacob's Pillow. With art and culture kiting around in cyberspace and responding instantly to our keyboard-trained fingers, we are constantly jumping over boundaries. Crossing them in real time with tangible objects is another matter. Who would have imagined that The Sarasota Ballet would become a treasure house of over … [Read more...]
A Small Ballet Ensemble Looks on the Bright Side
Daniel Ulbricht has a mission in life that goes beyond being a buoyant, dramatically expressive principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. Forming and re-forming Daniel Ulbricht & Stars of American Ballet in NYCB’s off-season enables him to bring first-rate dancers to communities around the country. The group he brought to Jacob’s Pillow this summer for its second appearance there numbers … [Read more...]