About the Voice
by Paul Parish
[Editor's note: This is a slightly expanded version of a letter, by San Francisco-based critic Paul Parish, sent to the Editors of the Village Voice.]
To the editors:
The recent buy-out of the The Village Voice, and the firing of the arts editors, including dance editor Elizabeth Zimmer, according to the article "Village Voice Dismisses 8, Including Senior Arts Editors," by MOTOKO RICH in the NY TIMES, Sept 1, 2006, has "decimated the senior ranks of its arts staff." Though the move was not a surprise to anyone who has noticed the troubles at the LA Times or Knight Ridder (where "shareholder interest" has been cited to justify "downsizing" writers in order to raise productivity), it is a landmark of the most depressing kind, not just for us dance-critics (though we're the most marginalized of the intelligentsia), but for everyone. READ MORE
Flashy Dancing from Cuba
by John Percival
You may remember that I was not exactly enthusiastic about the Cuban National Ballet’s visit to London in August 2005, but that mine was a minority view, which explains why they have returned to Sadler’s Wells after only 13 months. This time they brought “Don Quixote” as the full-evening show, replacing last year’s “Giselle”, and also I was able to see the programme of short items they give as a mixed bill, “Magia de la Danza”. READ MORE
Kansas City Does Tharp
by Susan Reiter
Given a one-night opportunity to re-introduce itself to a New York audience after nearly 20 years, Kansas City Ballet impressed as a youthfully vigorous, robust ensemble. The two larger works that bookended the program called for, and received, a sense of team spirit and mutual support, and the dancers offered that in abundance. This was not a program designed to showcase refined classicism as much as it was a pleasing display of eager American energy and unaffected, committed performing. READ MORE
Back to Bangkok – A Letter about Puppets and People
by George Jackson
The movement of puppets and marionettes has always seemed something of a mystery despite the purely mechanical laws governing these artifacts’ workings. Humanity keeps attributing personality, willpower and even soul to what everyone concedes are merely mobile dolls. In the West, we’ve seen people imitate dolls in “Coppelia”, “Die Puppenfee”, “Petrouchka”, “La Boutique fantasque”, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” and other ballets. We’ve read Kleist’s classic essay and Hoffmann’s tales, and also heard and seen the last mentioned as danced opera. In the Far East, entire traditions of puppet performances evolved — Japanese Bunraku and Javanese shadow cut-outs probably being the best known in the West. Last year there was a fertile meeting of East and West, and of old puppet manipulations and the latest video technology in Ping Chong’s Cathay tales for Kennedy Center’s China Festival. READ MORE
Smuin Ballet
California Breezes
by Susan Reiter
For a moment, it seemed that there was some mistake and it must be Eliot Feld’s company, not Michael Smuin’s, that was performing at the Joyce. For the opening work, “Bluegrass/Slyde,” the curtain rose on a red set that looked like an invitation for dancers to clamber, climb and otherwise perform task-oriented physical feats: anchored at both sides, it featured a wide horizontal segment from which hung three poles, suspended just above the floor. At the bottom of each was a disc-shaped little platform. READ MORE