American Ballet Theatre's Tharp Trio at Lincoln Center, May 30-June 3 Does anyone dare to call Giselle dated? I doubt it. It’s a centuries-old classic that’s had numerous facelifts. I don’t often wish myself back at its premiere in 1832. However, feeling a twinge of nostalgia for something in your own not-so-distant past can be enriching when contemplating it anew. I wrote my review of … [Read more...]
Celebrating Thirty Years, Moving On
Doug Varone and Dancers shows old and new works at the BAM Harvey Theater. Doug Varone and Dancers is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and during the past three decades, Varone has also choreographed dances for other companies, as well as directing and choreographing operas. Knowing that about him, you might expect that his style is not a static one, and you would be correct. In … [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...]
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...]
Then Plus Now
David Gordon is the King of Repetition, and I don’t want to hear any back talk. He manages dance material like someone holding an object up to direct sun, then to a candle flame, setting it against different backgrounds, turning it sideways. “Look at it now. Now look again.” He’s also a master re-arranger—juxtaposing past to present, rehearsal to performance, new to old, life to art. Gordon was … [Read more...]
Seeking Albert
A slender, beautiful black woman, wearing a black, high-necked 19th-century gown, sits motionless in a wooden chair on a stage covered with sand. A stuffed raven perches on her wrist. She sits there for a very long time. The stage is that of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Opera House, the women is Sheryl Sutton, it’s 1970, and the image occurs in Robert Wilson’s The Life and Times of Sigmund … [Read more...]
Covering Ground with Cage and Glass
In 2010, Molissa Fenley explored a new path, commissioning a number of artists to design props that could be manipulated by her and two additional dancers. Sometimes the results were striking, sometimes contrived. The newer Credo in Us, shown at Judson Church on January 9, goes way beyond The Prop Dance into a disciplined wildness and playfulness you might not have expected of Fenley—perhaps … [Read more...]