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Long Live the Queen

“Mo(or)town/Redux,” “Scott, Queen of Marys”
Doug Elkins Choreography Etc.,
Baryshnikov Arts Center
New York, NY
December 5, 2012

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2012 by Leigh Witchel

It takes talent, and a little bit of nuttiness, to combine Scottish folk dance and voguing. But Doug Elkins has that kind of imagination, and “Scott, Queen of Marys” made a welcome return to New York after 16 years absence.

Nureyev and I

 "Instrument"
Monique Jenkinson
November 29, 2012
CounterPULSE
San Francisco, CA
by Rita Felciano 

Copyright © Rita Felciano, 2012

Performance artist (and sometime drag artist) Monique Jenkinson may have -- as they say -- left Ballet behind, but Ballet has not left her. It creeps into her fantastical creations either as a reference or in actual movements. For "Instrument", she has dug into its core as a means to examine the nature of performance. The piece needs tightening, particularly in the early parts, and a few of the references probably could be clarified. But this is a rich, evocative and entertaining work of dance theater for which the genius and person of Rudolf Nureyev provided the conduit.

Learning How

"Untrained"
Lucy Guerin
BAM Fisher
New York, NY
November 27, 2012

By Martha Sherman
Copyright © 2012 by Martha Sherman

Dance training is much more than physical conditioning and coordination. It’s easy to take the rigor and complexity for granted. Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin edifies and delights her audience by unpeeling the layers in “Untrained,” her 2009 work for four men - two dancers and two regular guys. The movement itself was fairly pedestrian and the non-dancers’ skills were about what you’d expect for untrained dancers. But the piece was engaging and all of the players worth watching, as much for their personalities and their willingness as for precision or choreographic patterns.

Bird Warfare

"The Golden Cockerel"
The Royal Danish Ballet
Operaen Store Scene
Copenhagen, Denmark
28 September 2012

by Helene Kaplan
copyright 2012 by Helene Kaplan

At the end of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Golden Cockerel" the Astrologer tells the audience that only he and the Queen of Shermakhan are real human characters.  In Ratmansky's new version for the Royal Danish Ballet which premiered in September, these two characters are so viscerally alive compared to the rest that no disclaimer is necessary, and they are squarely within two great traditions of the Royal Danish Ballet: conveying underlying, roiling emotion in mime and storytelling.  For the rest of the cast, Alexei Ratmansky's "The Golden Cockerel" made yeoman demands in mime, particularly in telling an unfamiliar story clearly and concisely, but as two-dimensional archetypes -- the coddling nurse, the sulky Princes, the maidens, the happy loves, the bereaved fiancee, the King's useless advisors, the Golden Cockerel -- and the development of underlying emotion was not an option for most of the ballet. This is the antithesis of what the Company does and what its audience expects from it.