Hannah Lipman

THARP LOOKING SHARP AT NY CITY CENTER Ten polished, pseudo-suited dancers graced New York City Center with playful panache in Twyla Tharp’s Diabelli (1998)– one of two pieces in the Diamond Jubilee program, running through March 16. Their polite yet zingy attitudes, melding with Anton Diabelli and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 120, imbued the theater…

IT IS, INDEED, BEAUTIFUL Wavering graphics of kaleidoscopic greenery paint the Park Avenue Armory, transforming the space into a trippy, mystifying woodland. Kyle Abraham, choreographer and dancer in Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful, runs around the stage’s perimeter in an expansive circle. His energetic speed embodies that of a child who has escaped the clutches…

HAVE YOURSELF A SW!NGIN’ LITTLE XMAS Nimble and percussive feet, wild windmill arms, and bright brilliant smiles are abundant and infectious throughout A Very Sw!ng Out Holiday, running until December 15 at The Joyce. Created by Caleb Teicher with a collection of collaborators known as Braintrust, and produced by Joyce Theater Productions, the spirit-infusing event…

I’M NOT SAYING I’M OUT FOR BLOOD, BUT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD… As four spry dancers emerged through the hazy illumination, I wanted to believe their forms could transport me into their dusty hollow desert. Howling winds paired with the sparse plucking of guitar strings by Chief Adujah surged through The Joyce, cultivating an eerie,…

As the curtain rises on Complexions Contemporary Ballet, I am greeted by five gorgeously toned, leggy dancers with sinewy rippling musculature arranged in a staggered line. Their bodies, racehorse-like vessels glowing under harsh spotlights, denoting a company of acute physical bravado. Last night began a two-week celebration of its 30th Anniversary Season — a repertoire…

YOU’LL WONDER WHY THIS PIECE DOESN’T LAND When watching the dancers of Brooklyn-based GALLIM perform Wonderland tonight, it became exceedingly apparent that the landscape of movement executed was anything but. Miller’s Wonderland could be described with an amalgam of adjectives; if “wonder” was to be one of them, then the sentiment did not gleam with…

ABT’S NEW NARRATIVE BALLET MAY NOT BE A CRIME, BUT IT SOMETIMES FEELS LIKE PUNISHMENT Last night, October 30th, at Koch Theater, American Ballet Theater presented its world premiere of Helen Pickett‘s ballet Crime and Punishment, a production that is at once charming and abstruse (it plays through Sunday). The combination of ballet and literature…