Celebrations
Party for Pennsylvania Ballet’s Barbara Weisberger, chat by Limón Dance Company’s Carla Maxwell and American Virtuosi’s Kenneth Hamrick, Dance Place opens its season by honoring Alan M. and Sali Ann Kriegsman, DC Metro Dance Awards 2006
by George Jackson
Festivities started the new dance season, 2006-7. The thermometer still did a summer jeté on Saturday, September 9 when Pennsylvania Ballet threw a birthday party for its founder and first director, Barbara Weisberger. The event — at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, a grand old house at Rittenhouse Square — brought out many of the company’s 1960s dancers and supporters. Mme. Barbara, in a dragon-fire China silk jacket over a midnight black dress, was majestic and motherly. PB’s artistic director Roy Kaiser managed the emceeing with easy efficiency. READ MORE
News from London
Cunningham, and others
by John Percival
Handsomely and extensively refurbished, the Roundhouse in north London has reopened with a short run (21-24 September) of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the British premiere of “Ocean”. The premises (originally — long ago — a railway engine shed) proved ideal for the concept of the choreographer and his late partner John Cage for music and dance fully in the round. The great circle of the stage sits centrally with us, the audience, on slopes around it and the musicians above and behind. And thanks to staff and students of the Guildhall School of Music, the composer Andrew Culver has been able for the first time to enlarge his music from 112 to the originally desired 150 players, providing seven layers each of nineteen pieces, played without conductor. Together with David Tudor’s electronic music, we hear a steady activity of sound. Those of us familiar with Cunningham’s choreography recognised many familiar elements in the runs and leaps, pauses and groups, arm extensions and repeated changes of placing and direction. READ MORE
Preacher
Helanius J. Wilkins' "Cold Case"
by George Jackson
No question about the urgency impelling Helanius J. Wilkins and the other dancers who put across his "Cold Case". All on stage were males — eight men and three boys — a rare sight in dance. All counted themselves as black. Each individual seemed committed in his own way to the vision of the world that Wilkins delivered to us in nine sermons. READ MORE