essays

This article originally appeared in Tutu Revue. Marie Taglioni as the Sylphide There’s a subdivision of feminist thinking that condemns the beloved storybook ballets of the nineteenth century for their ostensible political incorrectness. All those sylphs and Wilis, it maintains, all those maidens suspended in states of enchantment represent women as frail, vulnerable creatures, deprived […]

I was standing before a glass case — in a museum or library dedicated to theater memorabilia, I think. Or perhaps an exhibition space in an opera house. Where? New York? London? Paris? Can’t recall. When? No idea. Perhaps decades ago. All I remember —

This article originally appeared in Tutu Revue. Years and years ago, I asked Bill Carter — a demi-caractère dancer with American Ballet Theatre, a flamenco dancer manqué, and one of the most soulful artists I’ve ever known — if his vocation had already been evident in his childhood. “Oh, yes,” he reminisced, “I was always […]

This article originally appeared in Tutu Revue. Every spring, America’s two grandest classical ballet companies play a long annual season — most of May and June — opposite each other at Lincoln Center. American Ballet Theatre holds forth at the Metropolitan Opera House, while the New York City Ballet dances at the New York State […]

Viewers who noticed the importance of walking in the recent performances of Mark Morris’s “Mozart Dances”–here, most noticeably, a firm, heel-first stride–may recall that the tread is frequently a central element in Morris’s choreography. In an essay on the choreographer’s fertile masterwork, “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato,” this simple act is the one I singled out.

Feminist doctrine, eager to dissuade us from giving over much attention to millinery and hairdos, cautions that what goes on inside a woman’s head is far more significant than what’s on it. A pair of feisty, engaging productions recently playing New York — Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s “HairStories” and Regina Taylor’s “Crowns,” with choreography by […]

The gaudy, bizarre twists and turns of the film’s plot, influenced perhaps by the magic realism of the Latin American novelists Borges and Garcia Marquez, are extravagant even for this film maker, who thrives on flamboyant, unlikely extremes. But there’s a sober, well reasoned, and calmly paced subtext operating here too, and it has a […]

According to Denmark’s great Romantic choreographer August Bournonville (1805-1879), the idea of home is a splendid subject for a ballet because it raises the question of self-identity — a profound and eternally fascinating theme that is a staple of art. The most affecting of Bournonville’s works and a linchpin of the Royal Danish Ballet’s repertoire, […]