As if to underscore the Americanness of the form, the weeks around Independence Day always see a conflagration of hoofers and hoofing in Manhattan. This year, the events are particularly rich in history and scope. Besides Savion Glover at the Joyce through next week (reviewed at the bottom of this post) and the annual live Tap City events at Symphony Space and the New York Public Library of … [Read more...]

Starting backwards, with the Architecture of Dance festival at the New York City Ballet this season, the seven choreographers all had the option to commission a score, as well as a set by no less than famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, for their world premieres. With one ballet to go, I'm beginning to suspect this embarrassment of riches may be more embarrassment than riches-- that … [Read more...]

Where have all the animals gone? That's what the wild horses in Christopher Wheeldon's recent Estancia (Spanish for "ranch") made me wonder. The generation of choreographers who would have come into contact with more than cats, dogs and whatever happens to be declining at the zoo--these people rode horses (or ate them, in Balanchine's case), caught butterflies, listened to bluebirds, spied on … [Read more...]

Those would be Unrelated Solos, in which Baryshnikov shared a night with dancer-choreographers David Neumann, in his 40s, and Steve Paxton, 71, and Lady of the Camellias, the 1981 John Neumeier production currently enjoying its ABT premiere (or at least I hope it's enjoying it, as I'm not). While Baryshnikov reflects, Neumeier's cast of foolish characters abject: a ghoulish experience in which one … [Read more...]

Sometimes, in an early draft, you make a claim  that you then find you don't have the space to prove. Usually, you throw out the dangling idea; for this review of last Tuesday's La Bayadere for the Financial Times, it seemed worth leaving the sentence in, in case it resonated with some readers. See if you can guess which it is. Here's a chunk of the review: La Bayadère not only unites campy … [Read more...]

Maybe I will connect the subjects, in the heading above, later in the week. For now, only have time to post the reviews. Last day to see the new Ratmansky is Wednesday. Be forewarned: it has a shape all its own, which revealed itself, to me, anyway, only on a second viewing. But if you know from the start that the hour-long work--in itself an odd length for a ballet, neither the usual full-length … [Read more...]

I have always admired choreographer Stephen Petronio, but also have had certain reticences here and there: that the sophisticated bad-boy tone held the choreography back or that Petronio didn't take sufficient advantage of his strong musical propensities. This past Tuesday, however, I was awed: one of those happy experiences where you come out of the theater recognizing with alarm how absorbed you … [Read more...]

A good deal of experimental dance today--as in the Judson Church days--is closer to performance art. It examines its own parameters; the movement may be minimal. And yet choreographers exist in a nearly invisible parallel universe to visual artists. While choreographers and their audiences know what's happening in gallery and museum, the reverse isn't usually true--not on this side of the … [Read more...]

Faye Driscoll's 837 Venice Boulevard, which premiered at Here in the South Village in late 2008, amazed me so thoroughly that it's no surprise her latest, at Dance Theater Workshop a couple of weeks ago, amazed me somewhat less. It hardly had a chance. Still, I remain impressed by how Driscoll harnesses dance and the best experimental theater's story rhythms to expose the seams between social … [Read more...]

So, unlike Movin' Out, which was almost unanimously hailed (though not by me) or the Dylan dancical, which nearly everyone despised (including me), Tharp's third foray on Broadway in the last ten years, Come Fly Away--to a Sinatra medley, with the man singing, inimitably, from the grave and the orchestra live--has divided critics so drastically that the New York Times staged a contretemps between … [Read more...]