I don't have a whole lot to say about Christian Rizzo, though I would like to, because his solo outing last weekend at CPR (Center for Performance Research) was part of the French Institute Alliance Francaise's enterprising new festival Crossing the Line, which we are lucky to have.The French festival is a mini-version of the short-lived European Dream Festival, which for one month two years ago … [Read more...]
Friends and art: more on the conundrum
Lori Ortiz provokes more thoughts: Hi Apollinaire,I've been meaning to add to this thread about friends.Deborah Jowitt, after receiving the 2007 Dance Critics Association award, said that she likes to think of everyone as a friend. I don't think I was the only one to exhale. It was memorable and refreshing.The issue is not only how one can be fair, but how ideas--intellectual property, as it … [Read more...]
More on Ratmansky, writing about the work of friends, and–new!–Luca Veggetti’s “Oresteia”
In response to my salivating over ABT's recent hire of Bolshoi director Alexei Ratmansky as its resident choreographer and my stupefied confusion over anyone not seconding that emotion (Swan Lake Samba Lady, aka Tonya Plank, and brilliant commenter and blogger Meg respond with a good deal less stupefaction and more penetration here) and my sheepish joy in broadcasting my friend Paul Lazar's … [Read more...]
Paul’s planet
A critic can't be objective about her friends' work, and she shouldn't try: it's wrenching--and dangerous to friendship. Still, I feel safe in saying that my friend Paul Lazar is FANTASTIC--so charming and ridiculous, and inadvertently wise--in his starring role as the center of the whirring asteroid that is "1965UU," a one-act play about language and its human predicaments--about love and … [Read more...]
Fantastic Ballet News: Ratmansky in the house
...a different house than anticipated this winter, when the Bolshoi director-choreographer seemed poised to take over Christopher Wheeldon's position as resident choreographer at the New York City Ballet, but who cares? As The New York Times reported yesterday, Alexei Ratmansky is going to become a resident choreographer, but of NYCB's rival across the plaza, American Ballet Theatre. The future of … [Read more...]
In lieu of a real post: a cat and some notes (expanded version)
Among the books and flowers Wood engraving by Raoul Dufy from my namesake's bestiary poems, subtitled "Procession of Orpheus" (1911) Notes on ballet events long past William Forsythe's "Impressing the Czar," performed by the Royal Ballet of Flanders at the Lincoln Center Festival in the company's U.S. debut, late July. I was particularly struck by the choreographer's deftness at fomenting … [Read more...]
That endangered species, touring dancers
Merce Cunningham dancer Daniel Madoff has constructed a very nifty website for touring dancers and their fans. He explains: Touringdancers.com is targeted specifically at touring dance companies and their audiences. It features a combined company calendar in which the viewer can see multiple company calendars side by side. The benefit for dancers is that they can locate their fellow dancers … [Read more...]
Lovecat
Among the many absurd and badly paying jobs I've had--ghostwriting a mail-in Ph.D. on economics, wrapping holiday Crate and Barrel purchases in enough paper to have kept little Jesus warm, translating Richard III into easy English--one I recall without shuddering is as an all-purpose office assistant to some all-purpose Israeli émigrés in the Bay Area. Their various schemes included buying … [Read more...]
Alvin Ailey’s fiftieth, from the inside out
Foot in Mouth invited dancer, dance teacher, and writer Theresa Ruth Howard to reflect on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's fiftieth anniversary, which the company is currently in the middle of, from the inside out. Here she is: In history books, memoirs, and biographies, the subjects of the photographs--peering out from so very long ago--appear to readers as we have come to know them: at home … [Read more...]
Jerome Robbins’ “Goldberg Variations,” back and front
I know, I know, Foot in Mouth has been experiencing a time warp lately. Here, for example, are some thoughts on a ballet I saw more than two weeks ago. In his "Goldberg Variations," to the complete Bach score, Jerome Robbins concludes most of his own variations with a flock of dancers rushing in from the wings as the dancers already there finish up. It's a nice touch, a little joke about … [Read more...]