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Not His First Rodeo

"Copland Dance Episodes"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York
January 28, 2023 evening

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2023 by Mary Cargill

Justin Peck first used Copland's music for his 2015 ballet "Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes", an abstract piece set to Copland's symphonic arrangement of the ballet score that launched Agnes de Mille. For his new full-length ballet (as advertised and sold by the company, though it is a 70+ minute intermission-less piece) he has incorporated most of his earlier "Rodeo" and added two other Copland dance scores, "Appalachian Spring", composed for Martha Graham, and "Billy the Kid", from a now rarely seen ballet commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein and choreographed by Eugene Loring, with Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" as the overture.  All of these works have a spacious grandeur and a Western twang (Copland interspersed cowboy and folk songs into his ballets) and his music evokes sunsets, campfires, boundless horizons, and determined optimism, which the orchestra, conducted by Andrew Litton, brought to life, beginning with the blazingly confident trumpets of the overture.

New York City Ballet in Justin Peck's "Copland Dance Episodes" photo © Erin Baiano.

Two by Two

"Donizetti Variations", "Haieff Divertimento", "Valse-Fantaisie", "Stravinsky Violin Concerto"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
Lincoln Center
New York, New York
January 17, 2023

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2023 by Mary Cargill

New York City Ballet's Winter season opened with two pairs of Balanchine ballets, as the 19th century confections "Donizetti Variations" and "Valse-Fantaisie" alternated with the more austere and astringent 20th century works "Haieff Divertimento" and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto".  The pairings, with their contrasting styles, showed so clearly how music propelled Balanchine's choreography.  These ballets are all wedded to their scores, the movements intertwined with the music, and, with the barest whisper of a narrative, all have a distinctive emotion.

Ashley Laracey and Joseph Gordon in "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" photo © Erin Baiano

Vangeline's Story

-- By Tom Phillips 

Butoh began in the ruins of post-war Japan as the "dance of utter darkness."  Today it is performed and taught all over the world, and increasingly influential in other techniques and styles. No one is more responsible for this than Vangeline, founder and director of the New York Butoh Institute, which marks its 20th anniversary in 2023. After many years on the margins of the dance world, this year she is flooded in fellowships – including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to study the brain waves of Butoh dancers. 

Vangeline was born in 1970 in France, and came to New York in 1992. She told us her life story recently while sitting and stretching on the floor of her dance studio, near the banks of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.     

            Vangeline Theatre in "The Slowest Wave"  Photo: Michael Blase