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Passing it On

The Balanchine Woman
Studio 5
New York City Center
New York, New York
October 25, 2018

by Mary Cargill
copyright © 2018 by Mary Cargill

The New York City Center is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year and to salute the Center's crucial role in the development of the New York City Ballet has arranged an impressive array of Balanchine ballets to be performed by several companies, a glorious mini-festival celebrating the choreographer.  The intimate, innovative Studio 5 series started the party with a presentation by the former NYCB dancer Heather Watts on "The Balanchine Woman".  Since his hundreds of ballets have varied and fascinating roles for women, there was a myriad of choices and it turned out that the ballets discussed had only a glancing relationship to those listed in the program.  Thus the evening had a wonderfully impromptu feel, as if the audience were sitting in the large living room of a spontaneous, gracious, and generous hostess.

Photo of George Balanchine from the New York City Center website

A Mermaid from Korea

Song of the Mermaid
K'Arts Dance Company
New York City Center
New York, NY
October 20, 2018 evening

by Carol Pardo
copyright © 2018 by Carol Pardo 

 
"Song of the Mermaid", choreo- graphed by Sunhee Kim, has as its source Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid". The Mermaid, the youngest of six daughters of the King of the Sea, falls in love with the prince she has saved from drowning. To act on her love, she seeks help from a Blanket Octopus who covets her father's throne. Her wish is granted. In exchange for her voice (here the ability to play a coral pan pipe) she will grow legs making her look human. The bargain is struck with the understanding that failing to win the prince's love will be fatal.The Mermaid cannot know that her nemesis has stacked the deck. Just as her dream is about to come true, the Blanket Octopus marries her prince off to a princess from a neighboring land. Her sacrifice was for naught.

K'Arts Dance Company in "Song of the Mermaids

Watermill

“Watermill”
BAM Fisher
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn, New York
October 24, 2018 

by Gay Morris
copyright© 2018 by Gay Morris

Jerome Robbins created “Watermill” for New York City Ballet in 1972. It was staged for what was then known as the State Theater, now the David H. Koch Theater, a proscenium theater of opera house proportions. Choreographer Luca Veggetti has re-imagined the work for the intimate BAM Fisher, and the ballet benefits greatly from it.

Joaquin De Luz as the central character in Jerome Robbins' Watermill," surrounded by bobbing lights on flexible poles manipulated by other dancers. Photo: Rebecca Greenfield.

Dig Dance

“Viva Vivaldi (excerpts),” “Aureole,” “Gamelan (excerpts),” “Party Mix”
Dig Dance, Taylor, Joffrey, Arpino: Deliciously Alternative Classics
New York Dance Project, Taylor 2 
92nd St Y
New York, NY 
October 19, 2018

by Carol Pardo
copyright © 2018 by Carol Pardo

When it comes to dance, particularly 20th century theatrical dance with a classical or neoclassical bent, words can be, if not dangerous, certainly misleading, paving stones on the road to disappointment. This has little to do with the quality of the dancers or dancing but rather with expectations raised and unmet.

Sloan Pearson, Irving Amigon, Amanda Stevenson and Rei Akazawa of Taylor 2 in Paul Taylor's "Aureole". Photo © copyright Liz Schneider-Cohen.

An Extraordinary Ordinary

“Körper”
Sasha Waltz & Guests
Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances
Berkeley, CA
Oct, 20, 2018

by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano 2018

If the body is both the object and the subject of Dance, you can stop worrying about Sasha Waltz’s “Körper” being dance or not, because it is. Waltz made her reputation for making work about the ordinary, the everyday, and she makes us look at it through a prism that enlightens and entertains simultaneously. The human body is about as basic an object to become the subject of inquiry for a choreographer. In ninety minutes Waltz examines, dissects, muses on and questions the human body through the human body, and they way it has established itself in our consciousness. A brilliant set of moving images shifted our awareness, reconsidered common knowledge, questioned our perceptions, our memory and treatment of this most quotidian and yet most personal part of our lives. “Körper” started out as an anatomy lesson but became a meditation on what being human can and sometimes does entail.

Sasha Waltz & Guests in “Körper” Photo: Bernd Uhly 

Miami City Ballet’s Program I: Balanchine, Taylor and Another America

“Concerto Barocco,” “Company B” and “Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”
Miami City Ballet
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
Miami, Florida
October 19th and 21st, 2018

by Sean Erwin
copyright © 2018 by Sean Erwin

Miami City Ballet Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez addressed the audience before the start of MCBs 33rd season on Friday, October 19^th at the Adrienne Arsht Center and dedicated the performance of “Company B” to choreographer Paul Taylor, who died in August. 

With that, Program I opened to “Concerto Barocco”, danced to Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins. This piece debuted on tour in 1941 as part of the State Department’s initiative to cultivate support during the war among South American allies.  

Simone Messmer, Jovani Furlan and Miami City Ballet dancers in Balanchine's Concerto Barocco. Photo © Alexander Iziliaev.

Women's Work

“Le Jeune,” “Dream within a Dream (deferred),” “In the Upper Room”
American Ballet Theatre
Fall Gala
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
October 12, 2018

by Michael Popkin
Copyright © 2018 by Michael Popkin

Is there something specifically female in the content or experience of a ballet by a woman, besides the fact that a woman created it? In programming a Fall Gala exclusively of works by women at the start of its brief fall season at Lincoln Center, American Ballet Theatre implicitly put this question on the table. In a brief and beautiful work at the start, Lauren Lovette - the youngest of the three choreographers whose work was seen that night (she’s also a principal dancer at New York City Ballet in her day gig) - gave the answer, yes. On an evening where Michelle Dorrance’s major new commission fell flat and the revival of Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room” was poorly cast and often poorly danced, Lovette’s offering was the best thing on the bill.

Photo copyright © Marty Sohl of ABT Studio Company in “Le Jeune”

"Garden Blue" and other works at American Ballet Theatre

“Songs of Bukovina,” “Garden Blue,” “In the Upper Room”
American Ballet Theatre
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
October 19, 2018

by Gay Morris
copyright© 2018 by Gay Morris

Under the rubric, “ABT Women’s Movement,” American Ballet Theatre is promoting women choreo- graphers during its current fall season at the Koch Theater. Two were represented in Friday’s program: Jessica Lang and Twyla Tharp. Tharp, of course, has been on the scene for decades, and “In the Upper Room” has been in ABT’s repertory since 1988. Lang has made one ballet for ABT (“Her Notes” in 2016); her second, “Garden Blue,” was premiered Friday. Not that Lang is a novice, she has had her own dance company since 2011, and has made dances for a number of different groups.

Scene from "Garden Blue". Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.

Create and Recreate

"Handel", "Common Ground"
Alonzo King Lines Ballet
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
October 11, 2018

by Rita Felciano
copyright © 2018 by Rita Felciano,

The Kronos Quartet and Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet call San Francisco home. Both have pioneered new perspectives in their fields, making them core values of their work. The Kronos was established in 1973, Alonzo King Lines Ballet in 1982. So you wonder, what took them so long to finally get together? For “Common Ground”, their first collaboration, King chose five composers from the Kronos Quartet’s “Fifty for the Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire” with which these musicians hope to set sign posts for how string quartet repertoire might evolve in the years to come. King, drawing on the quietly meditative quality of these selections created a choreographic, in many ways quite traditional trajectory. It started with the almost imperceptible, built into splendid Pas de Deux and than returned to darkness. It almost looked like rondo form. “Common Ground” is superb, mysterious, transparent and, perhaps, even ineffable. It approached something like a reflection of cosmic processes. 

All That’s New and Nothing Old

“Reclamation Map,” “Balamouk,” “Midnight Raga,” “The Crane Calling (exerpt)”
Fall For Dance Festival – Program 3
Tayeh Dance with Heather Christian, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Nederlands Dans Theater 2, National Ballet of China
New York City Center
New York, NY
October 5, 2018

by Marianne Adams
copyright © 2018 by Marianne Adams

In the middle of this year’s Fall For Dance Festival, Program 3 was an assembly of all premieres – two of the works were new to the U.S. audience, the other two altogether new creations. It may not have been the strongest offering of the festival, but it was eclectic and, by omitting any tried and true favorite from the mix, also a bit daring and remarkable.

Photo of Tayeh Dance in “Reclamation Map.” Photo © by Paula Lobo