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Next Generation

"Flock"
The Next Ice Age
Gardens Ice House
Laurel, Maryland
December 28, 2010

by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson

Having tried twice in the last two years to catch a performance by The Next Ice Age and failed, I finally got both the when and the where right. Summer before last I missed their run at an Ocean City beach hotel by just a day, and this past fall I made a wrong turn within one stoplight of the rink where they were giving two premiers plus two demonstration classes. Today, it was a mini-matinee that I found my way to - a repeat of one of the October 30 premiers, Nathan Birch's "Flock". To the music of a nocturne (Debussy's third), Birch has three young women swoop together over an expanse of ice, exploring space and their own abilities to be individual without loosing the innate cohesion birds have flying in formation.

Murphy's Law

"The Nutcracker"
American Ballet Theatre
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn, New York
December 23, 2010

by Mary Cargill

copyright © 2010 by Mary Cargill

Alexei Ratmansky's new "Nutcracker" for ABT has many delights, and unfortunately, some disappointments.  But the heart of the ballet, the choreography for the main characters, (in this case, Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg as the grown-up vision of Clara and the Nutcracker) shimmers.  Murphy has always been a strong and thrilling dancer, but does have a tendency to hide behind choreography and present a slightly guarded, opaque presence.  Her Clara, though, was warm, radiant, and glorious, as she negotiated the filigreed steps (which seemed to owe something to both Ashton and Petipa).  Hallberg, too, was both warm and classical; they both gave the impression of dancing only for each other while including the audience.

Another State in Nutcracker Nation

"Nut/Cracked"
David Parker & The Bang Group
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
December 18, 2010 (evening)

By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2010 by Carol Pardo

 
Tired of tulle but hankering for another take on Tchaikovsky? David Parker’s "Nut/Cracked" is for you. The show—they’re not too proud to call it that in the program—is a downtown riff on the ubiquitous Christmas entertainment in vaudeville form and twenty-two numbers. Track suits replace tutus and Tchaikovsky gets an assist from Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller and Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians. The dance vocabulary ranges even further afield. There is ballet and toe shoes (no ribbons though), but also a goodly dose of "Saturday Night Fever" and most everything in between.

Stuttgart´s Gauthier Dance Company presents “Out of the Box”

A New Platform  for Youg Choreographers to Flex their Muscles
Stuttgart's Gauthier Dance Company presents  “Out of the Box”
Gauthier Dance Company
Theaterhaus
Stuttgart, Germany
December 18, 2010
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright by Horst Koegler
 
No, he is no relative of the famous French Romanticist, no distant uncle – and no Romanticist whatsoever, though he is a native of  Montreal from French/Canada – and by he way: he spells his family name with an h in the middle: Eric Gauthier, of 1977 vintage. He studied at the National Ballet School in Toronto, danced for two seasons with the National Ballet of Canada and came with Reid Anderson to Stuttgart in 1997, where he soon became known as a youngster for all seasons, a born Joker, though he never danced the part in Cranko´s eponymous ballet, but through all the stock roles of the repertoty from Cranko through Forsythe.

Desperately Seeking

“BUSK”
Aszure Barton & Artists
Jerome Robbins Theater, Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York, NY
December 19, 2010

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2010 by Martha Sherman

Aszure Barton claims that the title, “BUSK,” is not a reference to street performers, but comes from the Spanish verb buscar, to search. I’m not buying it. The piece is too filled with the entertainment of buskers’ arts – acrobatics, audience-grabbing surprise, compelling rhythm -- along with  whiffs of sex and magic. “BUSK” has fine, strong dancing but like street performers at their best, these artists use the movement and music to capture our attention and our hearts, more than take us on a journey.

Change

Winter Performance
Kirov Academy of Ballet
Washington, DC
December 17, 2010

by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson

Change, not revolution, is afoot at Washington's Kirov Academy. Don't expect dances by Petipa, Ivanov, the Legat brothers, Gorsky, Fokine, Lopukhov, Chabukiani, Vainonen, Lavrovsky, Grigorovich, Vinogradov and sometimes Bournonville (who visited St. Petersburg) to disappear from repertory classes and recitals. This time, though, there was a classical ballet made in America - "Serenade". True, the music is Tchaikovsky's and the choreography is by another Russian, George Balanchine, although it was a piece he had made after defecting from Russia in Soviet times. "Serenade" stretched the Kirov Academy students in several respects and they showed Balanchine's "first American" choreography in all its urgency.

Like Water Lilies on an Édouard Manet Pont

Martin Schläpfer choreographs Schubert´s “Trout Quintet”
plus Balanchine´s “Four Temperaments” and Mats Ek´s “Aluminium”
Ballet on the Rhine
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf Opera-House. Germany
December 11, 2010
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright by Horst Koegler

 After Zurich´s start of the 2010 season with Heinz Spoerli´s "Death and the Maiden”, set to Schubert's string quartet in d-minor, D 810, Düsseldorf followed suit with Martin Schläpfer's “Trout  Quintet”, choreographed to Schubert´s quintet in A major, D 667. A coincidence? Both choreographers are Swiss, Spoerli of 1940 vintage, Schläpfer born in 1959; both belong to the fraternity of Balanchine impregnated neoclassicists; and both are motivated by music running through their arteries. Schläpfer, is now in his second season as ballet director of the Dusseldorf company, while Spoerli reigns in Zurich since 1996. Both are experienced choreographers of chamber-music works. Spoerli did the  superb “Lettres intimes” to Janacek´s eponymous string quartet last season, while Schläpfer choreographed a gem of a ballet to Ligeti´s string quartet (when he was still in charge of the Mainz company) in 2005. Both pieces could not be more different – but both succeed in their unique way.

Best of Times

Masters & the Next Generation
"La Cathedrale Engloutie", "Chrysalis", ""There is a Time"
Limón Dance Company
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York, NY

December 15, 2010

by Mary Cargill

copyright © 2010 by Mary Cargill

The two masters of the program title were Jiří Kylián and Jose Limón, and the next generation was Limón dancer Jonathan Fredrickson, whose "Chrysalis" was a clear, if too long, riff on the virgin sacrifice motif.  The opening work, Kylián's 1975 "La Cathedrale Engloutie" was accompanied by his usual somewhat opaque program notes, this one talking about "the battle between self-imposed laws and order and, at the same time, resistance against these laws is one of the most complex facets of the human character"--apparently grammar is one of those complex laws that can be resisted.  But what was on stage was a moody, haunting, and completely captivating series of dances, set to the sound of the ocean interwoven with piano music by Claude Debussy. 

Gloss and Glossy

“Uptown,” “The Prodigal Prince,” “Revelations”
Alvin Ailey American Dance Company
City Center
New York, NY
December 7, 2010

By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2010 by Carol Pardo

Black history got a very glossy gloss in the triple bill of Matthew Rushing’s “Uptown” (new last year), Geoffrey Holder’s “The Prodigal Prince,” revived for the first time in more than a decade, and  the evergreen “Revelations,” celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this season. The program confirmed the obvious: when it comes to the Ailey rep, there’s “Revelations” and there’s everything else.

The Hard Nut

“The Hard Nut”
Mark Morris Dance Company
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn, New York
December 12, 2010

by Kathleen O’Connell
copyright © 2010 by Kathleen O’Connell

Mark Morris’ “The Hard Nut” looks as fabulously chic and shiny as when it premiered nearly 20 years ago, if somewhat less self-consciously outré. Now that comic books—pardon me, graphic novels—have been upgraded from underground cult objects to emblems of hip connoisseurship, the Charles Burns-based production seems almost a platitude. No matter: the work is greater than the sum of its presumed irreverence; it’s still fun and fundamentally generous in spirit. Morris sugar-coats in reverse: he’s lodged a soft, sweet center of redemptive love inside a sometimes-arch-sometimes-acid send-up of both crass 70’s suburbia and gauzy Nutcracker nostalgia. It’s a brightly-wrapped, high-concept gift of Christmastide sentiment for people who think they’re allergic to that sort of thing.