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...]
Close-Up Worlds
Bill Young/Colleen Thomas & Co. February 22 & 23 I’m sitting in Bill Young and Colleen Thomas’s loft waiting for the rest of the audience to straggle in, greet friends, maybe pick up something to drink, and settle down for the program of dance in LIT No. 19 (Loft into Theater). Memories assail me, specifically those filed away under “good old days in NYC,” when … [Read more...]
Hunger Appeased? Maybe Not
Kimberly Bartosik/daela premieres I hunger for you at Lumberyard. Lumberyard first appeared in Maryland in 2011, providing residencies for dance artists who were preparing new work. It resurfaced this past summer in stunning new quarters in Catskill, New York as a center for performances and film showings and opened its inaugural season at the end of September. On October 12 and 13, … [Read more...]
Are You Certain?
John Heginbotham and Maira Kalman premiere a collaboration at Jacob's Pillow. Do I see an acknowledgement or a warning? My destiny maybe? The seats in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater haven’t paid much attention to me until now, when I’m about to sit in one to watch the world premiere of The Principles of Uncertainty by choreographer-director John Heginbotham and … [Read more...]
Four Dances Mingle As One
Bill Young revives his Interleaving at 100 Grand Street, December 9 through 11. I was beginning to write about Bill Young’s revival of his Interleaving after he'd given it a 30-year vacation, when my planned opening struck a chord. Yes, there it was, the start of my 2013 review of A Place in France (a collaboration between Young and his wife, Colleen Thomas): me at 100 Grand Street, … [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...]
Dancers and Puppets Rebirth the World
Fantasque by John Heginbotham and Amy Trompetter opens Bard Summerscape 2016. The 2016 season of Bard Summerscape (July 1 to August 14) is devoted to the opera composer Giacomo Puccini. Hosted by the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, the concerts, lectures, panels, films and performances that comprise “Puccini and His World” pop up at various sites on the … [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...]