Getting in the frame of mind for the ballets of wunderkind Christopher Wheeldon … [Read more...]
How to watch a Wheeldon ballet. Plus, his young company’s promise and peril
When my niece, Hannele, was an infant, she would light up whenever you turned on the light, staring at this facsimile of the sun with curiosity and awe. For her little brother, Pascal, music had the mind-altering effect. Light took my niece out of herself; music pulled my nephew into itself. He'd close his eyes and let his head fall back in a swoon. Dance often moves in fruitful … [Read more...]
That ’70s ballerina:
Cynthia Gregory in conversation … [Read more...]
GO: Cynthia Gregory in conversation this Friday
To celebrate the release of the DVD "Together"--a compendium of scenes from ballets that the American Ballet Theatre ballerina shared with principal dancer Fernando Bujones--Cynthia Gregory is sitting down with my esteemed colleague Joel Lobenthal, of the extinguished Sun, at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble, 7:30 pm this Friday, October 17. GO! I know from firsthand experience that Joel is an … [Read more...]
Ann Liv Young: performance artist for the Palin moment
Recently at Slate, it flashed on writer Meghan O'Rourke what "dark literary doppelganger" Sarah Palin--"with her bright smile, her folksy-corporate style, and her Silly Puttied authenticity, which mirrors back at the viewer whatever talking point she's just absorbed"--reminded her of: a character in a George Saunders story... trapped in the American DreamTM. … [Read more...]
Dance fashion
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...]