Two beautiful solo aerialists soar high overhead like fearless angels–a young woman on a flying trapeze, twisting her pulchritudinous body into amazing configurations, and a daring young man masquerading convincingly as Peter Pan. Village Voice 11/14/05
Archives for 2005
Cisne Negro Dance Company
Vasco Wellencamp’s Canticos Misticos (to blaringly miked excerpts from Handel’s Messiah) contains several semi-abstract images that go right to the heart of the matter, many a pretty moment that confuses sentiment with deep feeling, and an unfortunate desire to cater to the dancers’ inner athlete that just about defines the company’s aesthetic. Village Voice 11/29/05
ACFDance
While some of Adrienne Celeste Fadjo’s dancers outclassed their material, the overall impression was that of work not yet at a professional level. Village Voice 11/23/05
MOVING AROUND NEW YORK
The Martha Graham Dance Company will be at the Joyce Theater, NYC, September 11-23, with a repertory that includes works central to the Graham canon. To me, though, the 1981 “Acts of Light,” which opens with a stylized version of a class in the Graham technique, comes nowhere near the grit and ecstasy of the real thing, described in the “Class” section of my essay “Moving Around New York.”
Joyce S. Lim & Paz Tanjuaquio
Two New York choreographers whose work is profoundly connected to southeast and eastern Asia paired up for a concert of striking contrasts. Village Voice 11/11/05
“Watching Ligeti Move: Three Ballets by Christopher Wheeldon”; “Rules of Engagement”
Any one of Christopher Wheeldon’s dances to Ligeti would confirm this choreographer’s astute craft and hint at an originality still struggling to emerge from a self-imposed tutelage under great masters. All three pieces proved that more can be less. The thrill of JoAnna Mendl Shaw’s Rules of Engagement lay in the danger one sensed–and the […]
VERSATILITY REIGNS
David Hallberg, dancing with American Ballet Theatre / City Center, NYC / October 19 – November 6 When I first got addicted to ballet, type casting prevailed. The men naturally selected to play Princes (Swan Lake’s Siegfried, Giselle’s Albrecht) were as tall, handsome, and harmoniously proportioned creatures as a company’s roster could provide, their […]
“Ballets Russes”
This splendid documentary film shows how the Ballets Russes evolved into a pair of rival companies that crisscrossed America, seducing both cultural innocents and sophisticates with glamour, beauty, and transcendence. Village Voice 10/18/05
Juilliard Dance Ensemble
Abetted by the hypnotic effect of Steve Reich’s Drumming, Eliot Feld’s Sir Isaac’s Apples seems to offer a God’s-eye view of a human colony persevering in a faraway landscape. Village Voice 10/14/05
Kim Whittam & Company; Compagnia Danza Francesca Selva
Whittam’s lithe, upbeat dancers look vastly at ease in movement that’s both slinky and bubbly, laced with the warmth and trust necessary to its contact improv tactics; Selva’s Just Walking looks like it wants to be “about” something–postmodern anomie, the vicissitudes of love, Tuscan traditions–but it never makes clear just what. Village Voice 9/19/05