danceviewtimes

Isadorables

Lori Belilove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Company 
Lori Belilove, Artistic Director 
Hayley Rose, Emily D'Angelo, Faith Kimberling, Caroline Yamada 
Untermyer Gardens, Yonkers NY
September 26, 2020

By Tom Phillips 
-- Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips 

A flock of Monarch butterflies –- stopping for the night in the Hudson Valley on their way to Mexico -- greeted early arrivals Saturday in Untermyer Park and Gardens, high above the river in Yonkers.  Their visit was unscheduled, but no more an accident than the gust of wind which an hour later lifted the silken wings of three dancers to Chopin’s “Butterfly Etude,” nor the shaft of light from the setting sun that illumined Gluck’s “Bacchanal.” Isadora planned it that way.  

Emily D'Angelo, Hayley Rose and Faith Kimberling in "Butterfly Etude." Photo: John Link

A Tribute

"Ave Maria" 

 dance solo choreographed in 1914 by Michio Ito
  to music composed in 1825 by Franz Schubert
   performed by Christin Arthur
    set by Dana Tai Soon Burgess  
     dedicated to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the USA's Supreme Court

It is a slow dance, mostly for the upper body. Watching it, one is ever more aware of independent motions that belong to the head and face, to the neck, to the shoulders and arms plus hands, and to the rib cage above the waist. Yet one is also certain that these parts of  the human anatomy are animated by one soul existing in a sea of light and shade.  The camera shows us the dancer's whole body only briefly. She is dressed in blue, as painters have depicted this figure of motherhood, womanhood and humanity. She takes barely more than one step, but that suffices.

Christin Arthur dances the solo simply. Ruth Bader Ginsberg (1933 -2020) took the time from her work to attend performances of opera, ballet and drama. These works of art broadened her perspective as a judge.

George Jackson
(copyright 2020 by George Jackson)

 

 

http://dtsbdc.org/ave-maria-by-michio-ito-dedicated-to-ruth-bader-ginsburg/ 

 

 

"Marius Petipa - The Emperor's Ballet Master"
by Nadine Meisner
Oxford University Press, 2019

reviewed by George Jackson
copyright 2020 by George Jackson

Our concept of classical ballet stems mostly from the work of Marius Petipa (1818 - 1910), a French choreographer resident principally in Russia at the end of the Czarist era. Until the publication of Meisner's biography, personal information in English about Petipa was somewhat scarce. As a reader of German, I relied on Eberhard Rebling's "Marius Petipa, Master of Classical Ballet", printed 1975 in what was East Berlin. Rebling's 430 page collection contains texts by Petipa (his formal memoirs, spontaneous diary, diverse letters etc.) and opinions about him by contemporaries and by important successors (Nijinska, Balanchine, Ashton, Grigorovitch et alia). It is an expansion of a Russian volume, “Marius Petipa, Materiali Wospominanija Stati” printed 1971 by the Leningrad branch of Iskusstwo Publishers.