I didn’t read Maura Keefe’s program essay while sitting in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Theater, waiting for the day to start. I didn’t read the program note by the versatile and highly regarded cellist Maya Beiser. I didn’t read the spoken text that was part of David Lang’s score. And, once the piece began, I didn’t identify one of the projected slides as showing Santiago Calatrava’s … [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...]
An Ancient Dance Play Meets New Music
Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto dance together again in a new approach to a Noh play. It is a marvelous robe! Well, not a robe exactly; it looks more like a shawl—light as feather, shimmering with gold, unearthly. It gives its name to a Japanese legend and to Hagoromo, the 16th-century Noh drama it inspired; the robe belongs to a celestial dancer who can depict through her movements the changes … [Read more...]
A Ballerina Moves On
Wendy Whelan retires from the New York City Ballet after thirty fertile years. In 2008, Nikolaj Hübbe was leaving his position as a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet to become the artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, where he had gotten his start. At a cocktail reception in his honor thrown at the Danish Consulate, someone asked him which ballerina he would miss … [Read more...]
Restless Creature
Wendy Whelan’s “Restless Creature,” duets choreographed by Kyle Abraham, Joshua Beamish, Brian Brooks, and Alejandro Cerrudo. At Jacob’s Pillow, August 14-17. Ballet dancers tend to have short careers onstage. If they retire at around 36 (as they often do), they’ve spent as many years training to dance as they have performing. Some stay in the field as teachers, choreographers, and company … [Read more...]
Is My Wife Having an Affair?
When Christopher Wheeldon founded a dance company in 2007 and called it Morphoses/the Wheeldon Company, he couldn’t have known how prophetic that name would become. From the beginning, the repertory balanced works by Wheeldon, one of the most gifted choreographers of his generation, with those by other youngish artists. Three years later, Wheeldon left Morphoses after a serious dispute over the … [Read more...]
At Sea
Here’s a fairy tale for 2011. Once upon a time, a very important knight—one of the great musicians of the late 20thcentury—joined forces with an adept ruler-choreographer (also a knight) who had inherited a powerful kingdom of dance. They set out together on a quest to find the true grail—a beautiful ballet that would further ennoble them both and maybe even bring in money. As far as we know, they … [Read more...]