danceviewtimes
writers on dancing

Volume 5, Number 10 - March 12, 2007

this week's reviews

Royal Ballet Triple Bill
Bodies Passionate and Dead
by John Percival

Taylor Gala Has Highs and Lows
by Gay Morris

Forsythe's "Three Atmospheric Studies"
by Susan Reiter

English National Ballet
by John Percival

"La Bayadere" in Amsterdam
Marc Haegeman

Rethinking Flamenco:
Israel Galvàn's "Arena"

by Rita Felciano

2007 Erik Bruhn Prize
by Luis Cardador Meinertz

Joffrey Ballet
by Susan Reiter

Anna Sperber's "The Tiger Situation"
by Nancy Dalva

Letters and Commentary

San Francisco Letter 23
William Forsythe, Sydney Dance Company, Stephen Petronio

by Rita Felciano

San Francisco Letter 22
Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group
Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now 2007
by Rita Felciano
by Rita Felciano

San Francisco Letter 21
San Francisco Ballet, Programs I and II
by Rita Felciano

did you miss any of these?

Paul Taylor Dance Company
by Susan Reiter

Suzanne Farrell Ballet
by Leigh Witchel

American Ballet Theatre
by John Percival

Bolshoi Ballet in DC
"Cinderella"
by George Jackson
"Don Quixote"
by Alexandra Tomalonis

Royal Danish Ballet's "Caroline Mathilde"
by Eva Kistrup

Vicki Schick
by Lisa Rinehart

London Letter
Fabulous Beast and Australian Dance Theatre

from John Percival

Bang on a Can All-Stars with special guest Meredith Monk
by Tom Phillips

New York City Ballet in DC; "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Two reviews:
by George Jackson
by Alexandra Tomalonis

Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras
by Susan Reiter

 



Royal Ballet Triple Bill
Bodies Passionate and Dead

by John Percival

Alastair Marriott's new creation for the Royal Ballet, “Children of Adam”, is vastly different from his only previous full-scale company piece, “Tanglewood”, made sixteen months ago. That was a plotless (although not meaningless) classical interpretation of Ned Rorem's violin concerto, which I reckoned worth more than the mere five performances it was initially granted. Presumably the RB agreed since they inserted it in their Kennedy Center programme later that season. Now he has taken his subject (and his title) from the often neglected poems of Walt Whitman and their celebration of the body's erotic beauty. Marriott presents a strongly dramatic, if not always entirely intelligible, situation involving two men, defined in the cast list as brothers, and a girl. She, played at the premiere by Leanne Benjamin, starts with a relationship with the older brother (Johannes Stepanek), and resists when his sibling (Steven McRae) tries to get involved. Eventually the younger man kills the older, but is forgiven by presumably his ghost. You might think of Adam's children Cain and Abel but situation and development are totally different, and what are we to make of six further couples who join the action? I hope this may become clearer on further viewing. READ MORE


Paul Taylor Dance Company
Taylor Gala Has Highs and Lows

by Gay Morris

Galas are strange rituals. First there is the audience, a perverse  mix of moneyed donors in black-tie and ball gowns standing out like birds-of-paradise against the drab sparrows of plain ticket-holders, who, needless to say, will not be attending the post-performance party. Then there is the performance, itself; to make it seem special, a company must do something more than the ordinary. For its gala on Tuesday, the Paul Taylor Dance Company chose to unveil a premiere and to dance another new work that had only been shown once in New York, on opening night last week. But all did not go well, despite rapturous hoots and cries from a crowd eager to convince itself that its financial layout had been worth it. READ MORE


Forsythe's "Three Atmospheric Studies"
by Susan Reiter

The way words are employed and manipulated to demean and even erase the truth as at the heart of William Forsythe’s “Three Atmospheric Studies,” a deeply personal, unsettling (and not always ideally focused) work that is fully engaged with events taking place in, and shaping our world, at this very moment. Forsythe’s hyper-intellectual approach at times puts the audience at a distance, but at its core grips us from its opening moment by placing us in the midst of tragedy: a mother’s loss of her son amidst the horrors and disorientation of war. READ MORE


English National Ballet
“Melody on the Move”, “The Canterville Ghost”
Choreographers: Michael Corder, David Dawson, Christopher Hampson, Will Tuckett
by John Percival

Four English choreographers provided the programmes for English National Ballet's spring tour. I could more happily have done without “The Canterville Ghost”, a supposed family entertainment drawing upon a novella by Oscar Wilde. But what Will Tuckett and his team have made of it insults that fine writer. The plot becomes a ghastly muddle, characters lack plausibility, and another Irish playwright, Michael West, has provided a plodding voice-over text to explain what's happening. Martin Ward's score is boringly repetitious and it never becomes clear why Dick Bird's design places the sketchily depicted castle behind a false old-style proscenium. Tuckett provides lots of steps, each more pointless than the next. In the cast I saw, Begona Cao looked pretty and danced appealingly as the heroine Virginia. None of the other dancers left much impression but that's not their fault. READ MORE


Dutch National Ballet
"La Bayadere" in Amsterdam
by Marc Haegeman

Last February the Dutch National Ballet premiered “La Bayadère” in the ubiquitous version by Natalia Makarova. The Amsterdam-based company already had “The Kingdom of the Shades” in the repertory, in different stagings since 1964, yet the full-length ballet was until now never performed. Since his appointment in 2003, artistic director Ted Brandsen has been carefully balancing his company’s repertory between the old and the new. He clearly understands the value of performing the great classics and “La Bayadère”, which he rightfully considers “an enormous technical and artistic challenge” for the whole group, makes a welcome addition to an already extensive list of 19th-century ballets. READ MORE


Rethinking Flamenco:
Israel Galvàn's "Arena"

by Rita Felciano

Watching Israel Galvàn whip a pirouette and partner an upside down rocking chair is seeing Flamenco’s past and future in one somewhat stocky but furiously expressive dancer. Galvàn’s parents—they run a Flamenco school in Seville--and his sister Pastora take a more conventional approach to this popular art form. He is both a rebel and a traditionalist. At the Mercat de les flors, his latest show, “Arena,” packed in Flamenco lovers but even more so a young crowd that is as likely to attend a conventional Flamenco presentation as Sunday mass. READ MORE


Sportsmanship Sweeps 7th Erik Bruhn Prize
by Luis Cardador Meinertz

On Saturday March 3, the competition Erik Bruhn, the late Danish danseur noble, posthumously endowed to encourage promising young dancers returned to Toronto after a five-year hiatus. The competition is restricted to the four companies which Bruhn, who died while he was serving as Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada, felt most closely associated with, although neither the Swedish Ballet nor the New York City Ballet (companies in which he danced or directed) are represented. The National Ballet of Canada, The Royal Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet and American Ballet Theatre sent one male and one female dancer each. READ MORE


Joffrey Ballet of Chicago's Golden Oldies
by Susan Reiter

Once upon a time the Joffrey Ballet was a New York City mainstay. Back in the full flush of the dance boom, the company would perform two substantial seasons (spring and fall) annually at City Center. These days, after a somewhat shaky period that followed soon after Robert Joffrey’s death in 1988, they have found a supportive home base in Chicago. But New Yorkers have seen little of them aside from their participation in shared Ashton programs presented by the 2004 Lincoln Center Festival, so a full evening repertory performance an hour outside the city was a definite must-see, and proved to be a substantial, impressive evening. READ MORE


Anna Sperber's "The Tiger Situation"
by Nancy Dalva

What a marvelous title Anna Sperber has given this, her first evening length work, though after seeing it I have no idea what it might mean. If you Google “the tiger situation,” you will find lots of information about the tiger as endangered species, and a bit about tigers on the loose. READ MORE

 

 

 

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