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On Subtle Wings

“No Time to Fly"

Deborah Hay

Danspace Project

New York, NY

March 27, 2010

By Martha Sherman

Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman

There is no beginning or end to dance, veteran choreographer and dancer Deborah Hay reminds us. As the sellout crowd milled in the lit cavern of Danspace, she quietly entered and began to move. This almost-70 year-old icon of American dance moved with the ease and certainty of a dancer who continues to bend her body to her will. Late in the dance, from a prone position, she lifted her left leg, slightly. As we watched, it rose. And rose. And rose, to an impressive 120 degree angle. Then she rested her forearm on the floor, cheek resting on her upraised hand, and hung out in that position as the audience giggled in the wonder of a body so attuned and still so able.

Out and About 3/18-21/2010

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel

• “Tyler Tyler” Yasuko Yokoshi
• “The Whiz: Emerald City”
• “Tango Casenave”
• St. Petersburg State Ballet Theatre

“Tyler Tyler”
Yasuko Yokoshi
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
March 18, 2010

The extraordinary aspects of “Tyler Tyler,” Yasuko Yokoshi’s examination of Kabuki in tandem with contemporary dance, were the designs and the traditional dancers.  Kayo Seyama, a tiny ancient reed of a woman, seemed frail as she stepped to center stage in a kimono, or a trivial printed t-shirt. Barely moving, brandishing a closed fan, she became the vortex of every sight line. Along with the young Kabuki actor Kuniya Sawamura and Asaji Naoki of the Bungakuza Theater company, she graced us with her learned expertise.

Go West

“Serenade,” “Kammermusik No. 2,” “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”
Los Angeles Ballet
Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center
Redondo Beach, CA
March 6, 2010

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel

Los Angeles Ballet is still pitched in the long struggle to give its metropolis a ballet company. Whether it will succeed is years away from an answer, but the company has made a solid, heartening jump. 

The all-Balanchine evening the group danced at varying locales (L.A. Ballet played four different theaters at last count, a geographical necessity) across the region  presented significant challenges, and the dancers met them with more success than in last year’s Balanchine repertory.

A Misogynist Swan Lake

“Swan Lake”
The National Ballet of Canada
Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
Toronto, Canada
March 17, 2010

By Denise Sum
Copyright 2010 by Denise Sum

“Swan Lake” at the National Ballet of Canada has not been kind to women. Erik Bruhn’s 1967 version re-cast Rothbart as an evil Black Queen. James Kudelka’s re-interpretation, which premiered in 1999, is not much of an improvement. The female characters are cruel, vapid, or most often, both. Even the ballet’s heroine, Odette, is not a woman transformed into a swan, but literally just a swan. Kudelka’s unimaginative “Swan Lake” incorporates change simply for the sake of change.

Poor Changeling

"The Little Mermaid"
San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
March 20, 2010

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano, 2010

The audience rose to a prolonged standing ovation. The dancers had performed superbly. The production is spectacular. The story of unconditional love is touching. San Francisco Ballet has a hit on its hands. What it doesn't have is a first rate ballet. John Neumeier's "The Little Mermaid," commissioned by the Royal Danish Ballet in 2005, and adapted for his own Hamburg Ballet in 2007, has so much going for itself that it is a pity it isn't better than it is.

Express Train

"String Sextet", "Walpurgisnacht", "Sunny Duet", "Solea", "DGV:Dance A Grand Vitesse"
Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon
New York City Center
New York, NY
March 17, 2010

by Mary Cargill
Copyright © 2010 by Mary Cargill

This very young company (the first rehearsal was in April 2008) made an impressive debut at City Center.  Angel Corella, one of ABT's most popular male phenoms, founded it to develop classical ballet in Spain, and there are many Latins in the company, along with a number of Slavic dancers, and some American and Japanese-trained ones.  This amalgam of nationalities and styles must have been a challenge, but the group has turned into a company in what must be record time.  Like all companies today, there is the issue of choreography, and the Corella Ballet seems to be aiming for a mixture of old and new; they have danced traditional works such as "La Bayadere", and their City Center season included some interesting older novelties, as well as comparatively new works.

Doppelgängers and McGuffins

“Dear Emissary…”

Walter Dundervill

The Chocolate Factory

New York, NY

March 13, 2010

By Martha Sherman

Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman

The milling audience could barely make out two ghostly figures entwined in the elevator shaft. One of them was Walter Dundervill, the choreographer, performer, director and dreamer of the mysterious “Dear Emissary….” Later, Dundervill and his doppelgänger, Benjamin Asriel, became guardians at the entrance of the bright upstairs stage, lounging like marble statues against the doorframe. A pair of hooded Prosperos, they either watched or wove the movie dialogue, luxurious dance movement, multi-era costumes, and theater geography into its dense pattern. We craned our necks, trying not to miss an image.

Scope

"Little Adorations", "+1/-1", "Entangled", "Last Look","Images"
CityDance Ensemble
Lansburgh Theatre, Harman Center for the Arts
Washington, DC
March 14, 2010

by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson

Adding a second Paul Taylor work, "Images", to City Dance's repertory and performing it alongside Taylor's "Last Look" was this program's big news. Pieces by two of the company's own choreographers - Paul Gordon Emerson and Christopher K. Morgan - preceded the Taylor dances. One of these homegrown pieces - there were three in all - was a late addition to the program. I didn't know the work and missed seeing the program insert announcing it but when, instead of an intermission, the performance continued and a pair of dancers appeared on stage, I found myself certain that it was more Emerson choreography we were seeing. Indeed, it was - which woke me up to the realization that he must have achieved something akin to a signature style. 

"Fille" in London

La Fille mal Gardée
The Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House, London
9 March – 26 April

by Judith Cruickshank
copyright 2010 by Judith Cruickshank
 
So, Frederick Ashton’s wayward daughter has reached her 50th birthday, as fresh and as lovely as ever. I can’t think of a ballet more guaranteed to lift the spirits and it has been out of the Royal Ballet repertory for far too long, especially in these gloomy times and when it seems that winter in London will never end.
And unlike the choreographer’s “Cinderella”, which begins a run of performances in April, the original décor and costumes of “La Fille Mal Gardée” remain virtually untouched, so that the first thing we see when the curtain goes up  is Osbert Lancaster’s wonderful front cloth locating this, originally French, story firmly in Ashton’s beloved county of Suffolk.

Nothing Personal

“Beach Birds,” “Duo,” and “Grosse Fugue”
Lyon Opera Ballet
The Joyce Theater
New York
March 9, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2009 by Kathleen O’Connell

New dance is really nothing new in Lyon. Jean-Georges Noverre, one of ballet’s revolutionaries, published his seminal treatise Les Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets there in 1760 and both danced with and choreographed for the Lyon Opera. The Lyon Opera Ballet, launched as an autonomous dance company in 1969, looks back by looking forward. Dedicated exclusively to “la danse contemporaine,” the company has amassed a repertory of both well-established and newly–commissioned work by contemporary choreographers as disparate in style and sensibility as Nacho Duato and Tere O’Connor.