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Dancing Through the Night

San Francisco Ballet
Various Works
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
January 19, 2017

by Rita Felciano
copyright Rita Felciano © 2017

 Galas are splendid occasions for frivolity. The One Percent join dance lovers, giving us a chance to look at the gowns we wouldn’t be caught dead in and those we would adore having in our closet. But above all it’s an opportunity to look into the brain of a company's artistic director, Helgi Tomasson in this case. Mostly Galas need to be a balancing act of mixing the new with the tried and true that will challenge the dancers and the audience but the latter not unduly so. And, of course, matchmaking — on stage — is also part of the skill for the plethora of duets that seem to be standard fare. In the 2017 San Francisco Ballet Gala, everyone performed admirably: the dancers, the Artistic Director and the audience who applauded generously. It was a relaxing and joyful evening at the Ballet which, it is hoped, also filled the company coffer for the new season.

Yuan Yuan Tan and Aaron Robinson in the Pas de Deux from Stanton Welch's " La Cathédrale Engloutie". Photo Erik Tomasson

Stravinsky Light and Sometimes Edgy

“Scènes de Ballet,” “The Cage,” “Eight Easy Pieces,” “Scherzo Fantastique,” “Stravinsky Violin Concerto”
New York City Ballet
The David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
January 22, 2017

by Michael Popkin
copyright © 2017 by Michael Popkin

While the New York City premiere of Justin Peck’s new ballet from last summer might have looked like the highlight on the bill, a crisp and focused performance of Jerome Robbins’ perennial classic “The Cage,” driven by the company’s youngest female principal dancer Lauren Lovette, stole the show. Peck’s “Scherzo Fantastique” certainly provided an entertaining 20 minutes. But on this program of all-Stravinsky ballets, NYCB’s revivals of works by Christopher Wheeldon and Peter Martins, and performance of Balanchine’s “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” also proved more substantial.

Photo © Paul Kolnik of Anthony Huxley in "Scherzo Fantastique"

 

Short Stories, Multiple Debuts

"La Sonnambula," "Prodigal Son," "'Firebird"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
January 17 and January 20, 2017

By Carol Pardo
copyright ©2017 by Carol Pardo

New York City Ballet opened its 2017 winter season with an all-Balanchine program which, like the recently ended run of "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker," includes sets, costumes and narrative. But this triple bill privileges the dark, the perverse, the tragic -- about as far from the Gemütlichkeit and sweetness of "The Nutcracker" as it is possible to get -- and even further from the pared down plotless works with which the choreographer is often identified.

A Havana "Nutcracker"

Ballet Nacional de Cuba
Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso
Havana, Cuba
January 7, 2017

by Gay Morris
copyright © 2017 by Gay Morris

In the United States, Alicia Alonso is best remembered as an important ballerina of the 1940s and ‘50s, noted both as a sensitive dramatic dancer (Giselle was her most famous role) and a technical virtuosa; Balanchine made the notoriously difficult Theme and Variations for her. However, in her native Cuba, Alonso is far more than a ballerina. She is a major national figure, certainly the only woman in the country to hold such a position. Her name is enshrined on buildings and her image is found on posters scattered about Havana. The Cuban government named her a National Hero of Labor and in 2000 she received the Order of José Marti, a UNESCO award sponsored by Cuba and more often given to male political leaders. The Museo National de la Danza, consisting primarily of Alonso’s personal collection of documents, costumes, and art works, is in many ways a shrine to her, with an entire room devoted to her image depicted by some of the country’s most illustrious artists. Havana’s opera house is named the Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso, and although in her 90s and blind, Alonso continues to hold the position of director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.

Photo:  Gran Teatro de la Habana

Spice Girls

"Allegro Brillante", "Swan Lake", "The Four Temperaments"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
January 18, 2017

by Mary Cargill 
copyright © 2017 by Mary Cargill

The current programming scheme of performing three similar ballets together took a welcome break on Wednesday, as New York City Ballet presented a varied triple bill, proving that variety is really spicy. The all Balanchine program had three varied works: the exhilarating opening, a drama, and a black and white masterpiece.  The newest of these works, "Allegro Brillante", was choreographed in 1956, but there was nothing old-fashioned or fusty about the program or the dancing.

New York City Ballet in "Swan Lake" © Paul Kolnik.

Pliantly, Even Softly

“antithesis”

Gesel Mason Performance Projects

Dance Place

Washington, DC

January 6, 2017

 

by George Jackson
© 2017 by George Jackson

 

Staged “in the square” so to speak, with the audience banked on all four sides of the floor, were acts of total theater in support of Gesel Mason’s several theses. Foremost was the notion that to entertain and to educate is one and the same thing. Just acting out doesn’t suffice for this insistent, agile, stalwart dancer/choreographer/teacher, nor does bare theorizing. She juggles tactics. Her session’s topic was the erotic, its female anatomy and how it differs from the pornographic. Not a moment was wasted. Impressions from lighting, sound tracks, splits of projected film and live figures impinged on the public as people settled into their seats. Even during the after talk Mason’s gestures were didactic and dramatic. Does she fit in with modern dance matriarchs such as Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey or Liz Lerman, who used motion, emotion and intellect to explore sex?  

 

Photo:  Kelly Shroads Photography

America Hurrah

"Kirana", "Consider Water"
Ragamala Dance Company and Davalois Fearon Dance
American Dance Platform - Program C
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
January 5, 2017

by Mary Cargill 
copyright © 2017 by Mary Cargill

The second American Dance Platform, a week-long, multi-company program presented by the Joyce Theater Foundation, was curated by Alicia Adams of Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center.  She wanted, she writes in the program, to show "a representative portrait of American Dance"; Program C showcased the current melting pot with the Ragamala Dance Company which infuses traditional classical Indian dance with an American sensibility and the Davalois Fearon Dance, founded by the Jamaican-born, Bronx-raised Fearon.

Ragamala Dance Company in "Kirana" Photo © Darial Sneed .

The Yanks are Coming

“Inside It’s Raining,”  “Falling,” “Dialogue of a Portrait,” “Middlegame”
Company/E and Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre
American Dance Platform- Program A
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
January 3, 2017

by Martha Sherman
copyright © 2017 by Martha Sherman

Much contemporary dance skips narrative on purpose, freeing the work (as Judson artists and other contemporary giants did) from “meaning,” story, and often from a direct relationship to music. The contemporary works in the opening program of the Joyce Theater’s American Dance Platform, though, went the opposite way, engaging much interpretation of character and story to puzzle over. Several of the works mixed humor with seriousness, but the jumbled stories embedded in the dance were sometimes more distracting than illuminating.

Alexandra Berger (with crown) and Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre company in "Middlegame." Photo © Ian Douglas.