Demonstrations of the École de Danse of the Ballet de l’Opéra National de Paris (School of the Paris Opera Ballet) / Opéra National de Paris: Palais Garnier, Paris / December 5, 2004 The Paris Opera Ballet School, founded by Louis XIV in 1713—it’s the world’s oldest academy for producing classical dancers—is now located in a […]
CHEERING UP
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch / BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, NYC / November 16-21, 2004 I’m having a lot of trouble with Pina Bausch’s work these days. As just about everyone has noted, the German choreographer whose dark and dirty dance-theater extravaganzas were once hailed as marvelously radical, has, in the last decade, been producing […]
IB ANDERSEN & BALLET ARIZONA AT THE GUGGENHEIM
Works & Process at the Guggenheim: Balanchine Continued . . . at Ballet Arizona / Guggenheim Museum, NYC / November 14 and 15, 2004 The first program in a series of four exploring the ongoing life of George Balanchine’s legacy showcased Ib Andersen, one of the most glorious of the Danish male dancers who “defected” […]
Monica Bill Barnes
At each of their recurrent impasses, unable to establish a mode of togetherness that will last, yet determined not to part, they face each other as if to ask, “Where do we go from here?” Village Voice 11/15/04
RUNNING IN PLACE
Mandance Project / Joyce Theater, NYC / October 21 – November 7, 2004 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the French say. The more things change, the more they remain the same. The proverb might have been generated to describe Eliot’s Feld’s choreographic career. Feld’s latest company, Mandance Project—consisting of five men […]
Henning Rubsam / Sensedance
The radiance the program possessed was due largely to the presence of performers borrowed from the beleaguered Dance Theatre of Harlem, who seem to operate from sources deep inside them. Village Voice 11/08/04
Kitt Johnson X-act
Slowly her fingers emerge from her shroud, their tips like tiny, vicious claws, her hands engendering subtle anatomical horrors that she places where her face should be. Village Voice 11/08/04
A FUGITIVE FRAGRANCE
American Ballet Theatre / Metropolitan Opera House, NYC / October 20 – November 7, 2004 Le Spectre de la Rose is a nine-minute ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine in 1911 for Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina. It is set to Carl Maria von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance and based on a poem by Gautier […]
NOVELTY
American Ballet Theatre / City Center, NYC / October 20 – November 7, 2004 It doesn’t matter how many classics a ballet company harbors in its repertory. If it doesn’t have new work to show, it’s dead in the water when it comes to ticket sales. The audience, so goes the theory, lusts for the […]
“Uqbartango”
Pablo Pugliese, born into a family of tango pros, entertains the notion that the soul of the genre can be expressed by augmenting its vocabulary with modern dance and ballet. Village Voice 10/19/04