Martha Graham Dance Company / City Center, NYC / April 14-25, 2004 If a long winter—meteorological or psychological—has scuttled your courage, you might want to check out a couple of terrific Martha Graham dances now being performed in repertory at the City Center. Cave of the Heart and Hérodiade are part of the Greek cycle […]
BAFFLED IN NEW YORK
North Carolina Dance Theatre / Joyce Theater, NYC / April 13-18, 2004 “It’s a puzzlement,” says the monarch in The King and I. Having witnessed one of North Carolina Dance Theatre’s rare New York performances, I can only agree with the king. The company is led by a pair of former New York City Ballet […]
Ailey II; ABT Studio Company
They deliver physical wonders with a modesty so profound, it looks like our era’s most endangered commodity—innocence. (Ailey) Their rendering of Ashton’s sublime matched trios, Monotones I and II, which aimed, rightly, for immaculate classicism and calm repose, was infinitely poignant. (ABT) Village Voice 4/13/04
LIVING DANGEROUSLY
Compagnie Maguy Marin / Joyce Theater, NYC / April 6-11, 2004 A curtain of flexible strips in carnival colors screens the three walls of the stage like a vertical Venetian blind. Nine dancers—first one, then several—emerge from behind this pliant barrier, then, just as mysteriously, vanish back into the corridors it shields. Suddenly revealed, then […]
Maureen Fleming
When she swathes her nude body in miles of gauze animated by a wind machine and lit to look like fire, you cave right in to her theatrical know-how. Village Voice 4/5/04
TOYS R’NT US
Stephen Petronio Company / Joyce Theater, NYC / March 23-28, 2004 The press release for Stephen Petronio’s latest creation, The Island of Misfit Toys, being given its first New York showings at the Joyce, promised “themes that include obsession, guilt, insatiable desire and the mundane details of life.” The night I went, the crowd seemed […]
DARK VICTORY
Johannes Wieland / 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Project at The Duke on 42nd Street, NYC / March 10-14, 2004 When Johannes Wieland operates in his signature style, he makes dances that are immaculately pared down and aggressive to the point of violence. Adamantly abstract on its surface, the work is haunted by subtle currents […]
IS LESS MORE?
Jonathan Burrows/Matteo Fargion / The Kitchen, NYC / March 11-13, 2004 Is less more? Answer: Yes, when we’re talking about Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion’s Both Sitting Duet. Performing the 45-minute piece they invented, the two guys sit on battered regulation-issue wooden chairs smack in the middle of a bare, black-box stage space. The chairs […]
Shannon Hummel/Cora; Anita Cheng Dance
Typically, the figures of [Hummel’s] imagination relate intensely to one another, while the hows and whys of their liaisons remain enigmatic; Anita Cheng’s dance imagination teems with ideas [but] the moment has come for [her] to work deep instead of wide. Village Voice 3/17/04
SHIFTING GEARS
Nederlands Dans Theater / BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, NYC / March 9-14, 2004 Come to us from The Hague and holding forth at BAM for the first time since 1999, Nederlands Dans Theater has changed while the New York audience wasn’t looking. For over a quarter century, it has been shaped by Czech choreographer […]