Often the visual arts will make a dance fan feel he or she is in the presence of dancing that doesn’t move through space and time, but is dancing nonetheless, or at least its cousin. The actual dance pickings seemed slim this year, as summer slid into autumn. This is often the case, but never […]
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Dr. Bill: Personal Indulgences No. 15
My father was a doctor, a general practitioner–G.P.–as his type was called back then when it was very common. Regular patients called him “Dr. Bill,” instinctively combining honorific with nickname to indicate their respect and affection. At the age of 12 he had emigrated from Russia to the States with his mother and siblings, his […]
Where Is Mark Morris Going?
Mark Morris Dance Group in the Mostly Mozart Festival 2009 / Rose Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / August 19-22, 2009 Mark Morris Dance Group in Empire Garden. Photo: Gene Schiavone Mark Morris, who shares top honors (with Paul Taylor) as America’s greatest living choreographer, is at mid-career, but maybe no longer at the top of […]
Dancers to the Rescue
Have you noticed that ballets that are inarguably choreographic disasters often improve after a few performances? This happens, I think, once the piece has been danced before a public audience and the performers have finally admitted to themselves that “there’s no there there.” Then they take the hapless creation into their own hands, recognizing that […]
Merce Cunningham, Who Reinvented Dance, Dies at 90
This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on July 27, 2009. July 27 (Bloomberg) — Merce Cunningham, the American choreographer revered for his continual reinvention of dancing, has died. He was 90. He died in his sleep last night in his Manhattan apartment, according to Leah Sandals, a spokeswoman for the […]
Pen Pals: Personal Indulgences No. 14
During a time in my life when I was feeling sad and isolated, and my own immediate circle–splendid, stimulating, and supportive people though it contained–was not offering me a certain kind of sensibility I craved, I had the maverick idea of augmenting my circle of friends with people I did not know but who were […]
Four Events at American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre / Metropolitan Opera House, NYC / May 18 – July 11, 2009 ON THE DNIEPER As celebrated in Russia as the Mississippi is in America, the mighty Dnieper River has accreted to itself a history, an atmosphere, and a mythology that reaches out to several arts–just as Mark Twain’s masterwork, Huckleberry Finn, […]
Dreams, Now and Then
New York City Ballet: George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream / David H. Koch Theater, NYC / June 16 -21, 2009 George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, screening of the 1967 film / Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC / May 26, 2009 George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, created for the New York City Ballet in […]
Rite of Spring
School of American Ballet Annual Workshop Performances 2009 / Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / June 1 (matinee and evening); June 3 (evening) “But first a school,” Balanchine is said to have replied to Lincoln Kirstein, when the later was urging him to be the lynchpin in forming a ballet company in the […]
Seeing Stars
American Ballet Theatre / Metropolitan Opera House, NYC / May 18-July 11, 2009 Nina Ananiashvili in Alexei Ratmansky’s Waltz Masquerade Photo: Rosalie O’Conner Always an exceedingly star-conscious company, American Ballet Theatre opened its annual spring season (May 18-July 11, at the Metropolitan Opera House) with a pair that would be hard to beat: Caroline Kennedy […]