danceviewtimes

Sakura Time

Kabuki Dance
Japan Society, New York
March 30, 2012

by Tom Phillips
copyright 2012 by Tom Phillips

To help commemmorate Japan's gift of cherry trees 100 years ago to New York City and Washington DC, Japan Society this spring presented both cities with a program of Nihon Buyo, the traditional formal dance of Japan. It was a perfect gesture, expressing the essence of Japan's true gift to us -- an aesthetic that is the polar opposite of ours, but one that has enriched our own traditions, and has been enriched in return.

Gallants, Gossamer and Otherwise

Paul Taylor Dance Company
"Company B", "Gossamer Gallants", "Promethean Fire"
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
New York, New York
March 27, 2012

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2012 by Mary Cargill

"Company B", Paul Taylor's salute to the men and women who endured World War II via the Andrews Sisters' songs, becomes darker at every viewing.  The opening "Bei Mir Bist du Schon", with its cheerful, upbeat rhythms, is haunted by dark figures, wandering through the melody, like ghosts remembering their past.  The larger stage tends to distance the audience, and helps the dances look as if they were filtered through a memory.  The dancers, though, during the happier moments, had an immediate effect, and Laura Halzack and Jeffrey Smith were explosive during the "Pennsylvania Polka".  "Tico, Tico", with a smooth and fluid Francisco Graciano, had an almost tragic impact, as this young soldier valiantly tried to keep up appearances (Graciano seemed almost desperate in his swaggering gesture of combing his hair).  It was clear that both he and the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (Robert Kleinendorst) were among the victims.   So too, in another way, were many of the women.  Parisa Khobdeh, who could dream, and Amy Young, dancing with her ghost, were heartbreaking.  It was a vivid performance of one of Taylor's most haunting works.

The American Dancer

“Devotion Study #1 – The American Dancer”
Sarah Michelson
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, New York
March 7, 2012

“One of Sixty Five Thousand Gestures,” “Solo, Deluxe Version”
Jodi Melnick
New York Live Arts
New York, New York
March 7, 2012

by Leigh Witchel

copyright © 2012 by Leigh Witchel

It takes guts to make a 90 minute dance out of one step. Sarah Michelson’s performances for the Whitney Biennial riffed off last year’s work, “Devotion,” a riveting, exhausting piece that was created in collaboration with another biennial participant, author Richard Maxwell. They’ve teamed up again here, but Michelson zeroed in on one aspect of the earlier work – its insistent repetition – like a terrier shaking a rat.

New at SFB

"The Fifth Season," "Symphonic Dances," "Glass PIeces"
Program Five
March 21, 2012"
"Raymonda Act III," "Raku," "Guide to Strange Places"
Program Six
March 23, 2012
San Francisco Ballet
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA

by Rita Felciano
Copyright Rita Felciano © 2012

With the two world premieres by Edwaard Liang and Ashley Page following each other only two days apart, San Francisco Ballet offered an intense dose of works whose choreographers, for all their differences, think of twenty-first century ballet as super-athletic, fractured, ferociously non-narrative, at hurricane-speed and packed with action. Smartly, both Liang and Page also recognized what they had in SFB's superb musicians, under the formidable baton of Martin West, so they chose distinguished scores which highlight symphonic timbre. Liang set Serge Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances"; Page chose John Adams' "Guide to Strange Places." Both works were named after the music.

Bells on their Toes

The Nrityagram Dance Ensemble
The Joyce Theater
New York, New York
March 23, 2012

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2012 by Mary Cargill

The Nrityagram Dance Company is a hybrid, a modern take on traditional Indian, specifically Odissi, temple dances.  That is, the company uses the historical technique in a theatrical manner.  For this visit, the three Odissi dancers were joined by two Kandyan dancers (Kandyan dance is also a temple dance) from Sri Lanka, and the two related styles made an interesting contrast.  The pieces had live music, traditional Indian musicians and singers, augmented by a Sri Lankan Kandyan drum.  The music, to western ears, combined a hypnotic droning sound (the bamboo flute) with rhythmic percussive sounds.  The music was punctuated by the dancer's delicate, bare-footed stomps augmented by tinkling ankle bracelets.  As the old rhyme says, "with bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes."

Powers of Memory

New Work: Nora Chipaumire and Okwui Okpokwasili
"Bronx Gothic," "The Last Heifer"
Danspace Project, Platforms 2012: Parallels
New York, NY
March 16, 2012

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman

Nora Chipaumire and Okwui Okpokwasili are more than dancers; they are forces of nature. In a casting coup for his consistently strong series, Ishmael Houston-Jones, the curator of Danspace’s Platforms 2012: Parallels, paired the women – both Bessie award winners at the height of their expressive abilities – for  an evening of two powerful solos.

Where Music and Choreography Meet on Eye-Level

Where Music and Choreography Meet on Eye-Level
Pleading for a New Category of Literature
 
The New York City Ballet in Germany
with ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins
 
New York City Ballet
Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden, Germany
March 16 though 18, 2012
 
by Horst Koegler
copyright © 2012 Horst Koegler
 
It´s more than thirty years since the New York City Ballet appeared in Germany at the 1981 Berlin Festival. They returned for a lovely spring-time week, with two performances at the big industrial city of Ludwigshafen on the Rhine and and three more at the Grosses Festspielhaus in Germany´s favourite spa of Baden-Baden, two cities which have no ballet companies of their own, but invite troupes from abroad for guest-seasons. The company danced a range of ballets, from Balanchine's “Divertimento No.15”, “Tarantella” and “Symphony in Three Movements” to Robbins' “Dances at a Gathering”. Baden-Baden has built up over the years an ambitious programme, dominated by the annual visits of John Neumeier and the Hamburg Ballet (very much like the New York City Ballet in Aspen, Col.). Considering that NYCB is definitely the favourite international company over here since that first appearance at the Berlin Festival of 1952, thirty years was a rather long time that Germany had to live without the Americans.

Collaborating Genres of Movement

San Francisco 2012 Dance Film Festival
Ninth Street Independent Film Center
San Francisco, CA
March 15-18, 2012

by Rita Felciano
Copyright © Rita Felciano 2012

Over the last fifteen year or so, several attempts -- most notably by choreographer/filmmaker Cynthia Pepper's FOOTAGE -- have been made in San Francisco to establish what New York and Los Angeles have had for years, a Dance Film Festival. So when Greta Schoenberg jumped into the risky business of producing this type of event in an underground gallery in 2008, she was in no way assured of success. But a success the Festival has become. This year included full-length films, primarily documentaries, in addition to the more experimental selections where, I think, the real innovation takes place.

Bread and Cheese

Paul Taylor Dance Company
"Aureole", "Troilus and Cressida (reduced)", "Brandenburgs", "Piazzolla Caldera"
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
New York, New York
March 13, 2012

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2012 by Mary Cargill

Paul Taylor made his first-ever appearance at Lincoln Center with a full and appreciative audience (the $3.50 tickets, in honor of the price of the original "Aureole" certainly helped).  The prices may have been the same, but this performance was danced to taped music, an unfortunate requirement in the recent economic climate.  The program included several of Taylor's substantial works, as well as a hunk of cheese, his jokey "Troilus and Cressida (reduced)".  The Koch Theater is much larger than the more familiar City Center stage, and the black proscenium framing them gave an unusual distance to the dancers, but this distance also helped the audience see the shapes of Taylor's impeccably crafted choreography. 

Melting Away

"Intravenous Lecture," "City of Twist," "Ethersketch I," "The Architecture of Loss"
Stephen Petronio Company   
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
March 8, 2012

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman

Stephen Petronio is in his stride. After 25 years of performing on the Joyce stage, he  comfortably owns it.  He also owns and honors the legacy of his mentors, Steve Paxton and Trisha Brown. In an evening of four works, he offered a re-imagined early work of Paxton’s; a short but stunning exercise in movement for ballet star Wendy Whelan; and two of his own masterworks, the first, a decade-old classic, the second, a rich new work in its premier showing.