From my Financial Times review of the Smuin Ballet, at the Joyce a month ago:  Trey McIntyre, whose own troupe is now the toast of Boise, has finally found a form for his whimsical, wide open, very American imagination. Taking its title and music from the Portland band The Shins, Oh, Inverted World is ballet's answer to indie rock - The Shins' kind, in which sweet, strummed melodies support … [Read more...]

Perhaps dance (of the non So You Think You Can Dance variety, anyway) is already too much on the fringe to make much use of a Fringe festival. This year, in any case, the only thing that distinguished the dance offerings I saw at the New York Fringe from what you might get at, say, the downstairs theatre at the Ailey building was that they were worse: either off-- like rotten vegetables, … [Read more...]

A peripatetic summer yielded this Financial Times essay earlier this month on outdoor shows. I noticed an ideological split among the presenting organizations:  The free outdoor shows peppering New York and and the outer boroughs each summer always have their separate agendas but this year a stark divide emerged. On one side was the community-building event, in neighbourhood parks from … [Read more...]

For the Financial Times, I took my annual train trip up to remote Jacob's Pillow last month, in which, middle-aged bones creaking in the rain, I was struck by what a spring chicken I am:Jacob's Pillow has long been an outpost of forward thinking. Before the idea of "cultural diversity" existed, founder Ted Shawn was inviting Indian classical dancer Ram Gopal and pioneering black ballerina Janet … [Read more...]

From my Financial Times review of the Tao Dance Theatre, at Lincoln Center Festival last week--one of the few modern dance companies from mainland China, and extraordinary: China came late to modern dance - and nothing is as deadly as a recent convert's earnest faith. So when the programme declared that Beijing choreographer Ye Tao, of the five-year-old Tao Dance Theater, "eschews … [Read more...]

So the Pils' month at the Joyce has begun, and the three premieres I was covering for the Financial Times--collaborations all, with DIY video stars, a genius juggler, and a thought-provoking European choreographer--prompted me to take the long view:Pilobolus has always been about illusion-making: lending the human body fantastical form. Until recently, the spirit of the '60s that spawned the … [Read more...]

After French Masters, the opening program in the Lincoln Center Festival's generous, three-program presentation of the acclaimed Paris Opera Ballet, I  thought, if these are the masters, what's left for the apprentices to do? The night's three ballets occupied a narrow range from silly (Bejart, "Bolero") to simultaneously stolid and fussy (Lifar, "Suite en Blanc") to hateful … [Read more...]

[Note: if you are here for the discussion of the Paris Opera Ballet, please click here, a new link.] The Joyce has had some terrific shows this summer, with the choreographers stretching their idioms.First, there was tapper Jason Samuels Smith in a tribute to Charlie Parker. The start of my Financial Times review:  According to the great hoofer Honi Coles, bebop would not have happened … [Read more...]

Here is the start of my Financial Times report of the irreplaceable Angel Corella's final dance for American Ballet Theatre: From the start - in 1995 at age 19, when he debuted at American Ballet Theatre - Angel Corella has radiated a sweetness so genuine it seemed to power his feats of wizardry: pirouettes so fast, for example, that you half expected him to spin out into the auditorium and … [Read more...]

[ED NOTE: This just in from American Ballet Theatre press office: Ratmansky to choreograph full evening of Shostakovich symphonic ballets. First up: October 18 for City Center season; next spring, the whole shabang. Yay!] So now I've seen the other two casts: Isabella Boylston as Firebird, Alexandre Hammoudi as Ivan, Kristi Boone as Maiden, Cory Stearns as Kaschei; and Natalia Osipova … [Read more...]