Count Hermann Carl von Keyserlink, so the story goes, had trouble sleeping at night in 18th-century Leipzig. So the amiable Johann Sebastian Bach composed thirty variations for harpsichord that his precocious and gifted pupil, 14-year-old Johann Gottheim Goldberg, might play at night to relax the insomniac. It is hard to imagine Bach’s Goldberg Variations helping anyone to get some shut-eye; … [Read more...]
Finding a World
Who are these people, these inhabitants of Andrea Miller’s To Create a World? They are, of course, members of her company Gallim and collaborators in the work’s choreography, but that doesn’t answer the question. They seem to be part of an evolving world of fire and ice, themselves perhaps evolving. In Will Epstein’s score for piano, electronics, voice, percussion, synthesizers, saxophone, plus … [Read more...]
Stephen Petronio: Honoring His Heritage, Moving On
The Stephen Petronio Company performs new and historic works. It has long been something of a tradition that so-called modern dancers forge their own styles, train those who perform their works, and, inevitably, appear as a central power onstage. However, New Yorkers attending Paul Taylor’s recent American Modern Dance season were treated to guest artists performing works by Isadora Duncan … [Read more...]
Dark Matters from Finland
Tero Saarinen Company performs at the Joyce Theater. Who are these men? I can tell you their names: Ima Iduozee, Leo Kirjonen, Mikko Lampinen, Jarkko Lehmus, David Scarantino, Eero Vesterinen, Heikki Vienola (have you guessed that almost all of them are Finnish?). However, seeing them onstage at the Joyce Theater in Morphed (2014) by the fascinating choreographer Tero Saarinen, you would … [Read more...]
Twyla Tharp Dances Again
Twyla Tharp Dance appears at the Joyce Theater, September 19 through October 8 What do I admire—love— about Twyla Tharp’s best choreography? Its scrappiness, its heroism, its tenderness, her masterly way with form and dynamics. She knows how to make a tight, punchy barrage of little steps erupt into a slow soar, how to turn a canon into a fugue, how to let unison slide into diversity and … [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...]
Martha Graham Rediviva
Martha Graham Dance Company at the Joyce Theater, February 14 through 26. I’ve already written about the three new works that the Martha Graham Dance Company has acquired (http://www.artsjournal.com/dancebeat/2017/02/the-martha-graham-dance-companys-new-visions/). Of the remaining pieces programmed for the company’s season at the Joyce Theater, one is Nacho Duato’s 2013 Rust for five of the … [Read more...]
Colliding Ideas
Tere O'Connor Dance appears at the Joyce Theater in the second week of NY Quadrille. It’s no secret that Tere O’Connor wants the dances he makes to be about themselves. He reveals this on his website, in his program notes, and in interviews. He puts it more eloquently than I can, stating that over his decades-long immersion in dance, “I’ve discovered that traits such as inference, essence, … [Read more...]
Mysterious Beauty
Pam Tanowitz Dance kicks off "NY Quadrille," a two-week season masterminded by Lar Lubovitch. Over the years, dance has acquired a reputation for mysteriousness. This vexes many people, enchants others, and confuses others still more. After seeing Pam Tanowitz’s Sequenzas in Quadrilles at the Joyce Theater, I walked along the sidewalk a bit ahead of two women who were energetically … [Read more...]
Twyla Tharp: Past, Present, Future
Twyla Tharp presents one new creation and two golden oldies at the Joyce. Watching Reed Tankersley perform the long opening solo in Twyla Tharp’s 1980 Brahms Paganini confirmed my sense that Tharp considers dancers as heroes. In this work, which closes the program at the Joyce Theater billed as “Twyla Tharp and Three Dances,” Tankersley, alone onstage, performs Book I (a theme and fourteen … [Read more...]