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Dance
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Dance Preview: PARSONS DANCE (BroadStage, Santa Monica)
HIGH VOLTAGE DANCE, NO SAFETY NET A company built on athleticism, musicality, and sheer momentum returns to BroadStage Few choreographers have maintained the kind of sustained, high-energy appeal that David Parsons has cultivated since breaking out as a star dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in the late 1970s. After founding Parsons Dance in…
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Dance Review: SCORCHED EARTH (St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn)
LAND, LABOR, AND THE BODY Luke Murphy’s dance-theatre work turns ownership into something visceral and urgent St. Ann’s Warehouse unveils Scorched Earth, a striking dance-theatre work from Attic Projects, written, directed, and choreographed by the singularly inventive Luke Murphy. From the team behind Volcano, a dance I reviewed three years ago and will never forget,…
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THE LINK BETWEEN MOVEMENT, MOOD, AND BETTER DECISION-MAKING
Your best decisions rarely happen when you’re tired, stiff, and stressed. They happen when your body feels good. This is not a wellness slogan. It is a performance advantage. Movement changes how you think. It changes how you feel. It changes how you decide. A growing body of research backs this up. Regular physical activity…
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Dance Review: SYLVIA (American Ballet Theatre at Segerstrom Center)
DELIBES TAKES THE LEAD In ABT’s return of Ashton’s Sylvia, the best performance at Segerstrom wasn’t onstage Frederic Ashton’s Sylvia arrives at Segerstrom Center for the Arts after nine years away from American Ballet Theatre’s repertory, with the Pacific Symphony in the pit. Start there. Ormsby Wilkins conducted, and he set the terms of the…
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Dance Review: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO PROGRAM A (The Joyce Theater, NYC)
THREE STYLES, ONE ELECTRIFYING COMPANY A vibrant program that moves effortlessly from sensual modernism to jazzy precision to kinetic abstraction Hubbard Street Dance Chicago returns to The Joyce Theater, bringing the springtime vibes we have all been craving. I caught Program A, and I can assure you it is a full-on, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it showcase of movement…
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Dance Review: ALVIN AILEY DANCE COMPANY (In Residence at the Music Center; Program B)
The Music Center’s exhilarating 2025–2026 Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center season includes the beloved Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater which continued its exclusive Southern California multi-year residency with The Music Center with seven stupendous performances in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this weekend, March 25-29, 2026. This review covers the selections presented as Program B on…
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Dance Review: BALANCHINE: TWIN MASTERPIECES (American Contemporary Ballet)
BAD MOOD? BALANCHINE WILL FIX THAT American Contemporary Ballet’s twin masterpieces turn live strings into a reset button for the soul Two string duos. Two ballets. Both pairs similar in structure and running time, but containing glimpses of unlimited invention within fixed limitations. For their spring program, American Contemporary Ballet performs two works from George…
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Dance Preview: JOFFREY BALLET’S 16TH ANNUAL WINNING WORKS (Museum of Contemporary Art)
FIVE CHOREOGRAPHERS, FIVE PREMIERES Winning Works gives emerging dancemakers a coveted professional stage—and a glimpse of dance’s next generation The Joffrey Ballet’s Winning Works initiative has quietly become one of the most influential launching pads for emerging choreographers in American dance. Now in its 16th year, the program returns to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art…
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Dance Preview: STILL/HERE (Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company on Tour at Royce Hall)
STILL HERE, STILL ESSENTIAL The tour of Bill T. Jones’s landmark dance comes to Royce Hall with undiminished force The first time I saw Still/Here, it was at BAM. It was 1994, the year of Stonewall’s 25th Anniversary and The Gay Games in NYC. So, yes, there was celebrating, but the AIDS epidemic was still…
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Dance Review: AMERICAN ICONS (Joffrey Ballet)
A legacy program celebrating Joffrey’s founders while showcasing the company’s present vitality A richly performed evening where history fuels a thrilling, forward-looking repertory Preternaturally spry and acutely seasoned may be good ways to describe Joffrey Ballet Chicago these days—at least based on the company’s Spring program, American Icons, now in performance at the Lyric and…
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Dance Review: EUGENE ONEGIN (San Francisco Ballet World Premiere)
A PUSHKIN ROMANCE REIMAGINED THROUGH DANCE A handsome and emotionally direct adaptation that prioritizes storytelling and visual appeal San Francisco Ballet opens its 2026 repertory season with the world premiere of Eugene Onegin, choreographed by Resident Choreographer Yuri Possokhov and based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 novel. The story, perhaps best known through Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s…
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Dance Review: GRAHAM100 (Martha Graham Dance Company at The Auditorium Theatre, Chicago)
About midway through Martha Graham’s powerful Chronicle, performed last Saturday at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, I realized that the elevated platform at center stage was not just a platform but a highly stylized Olympic podium. It’s an important distinction. In 1936, Graham had been invited to participate in the Berlin Olympics, hosted under the…
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Dance Preview: GRAHAM100 (Martha Graham Dance Company International Tour in Chicago)
GRAHAM’S DANCE DYNASTY DESCENDS ON THE AUDITORIUM THEATRE Martha Graham Dance Company pairs signature works with a Bernstein-inspired Chicago premiere. On January 24, The Auditorium Theatre will host the living legacy of a pioneering genius. As part of its celebratory 100th anniversary international tour, the Martha Graham Dance Company will commemorate this unmatched milestone with…
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Dance Review: CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON’S NUTCRACKER (The Joffrey Ballet at Lyric Opera House)
A FAIRYTALE REBORN ON THE SOUTH SIDE Wheeldon’s Chicago-set Nutcracker still casts a decade-long spell Ten years in, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and the World’s Columbian Exposition are still a match made in ballet heaven. It’s December 24, 1892, in Jackson Park, a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. A young girl (Amanda Assucena), accompanied by her…
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Dance Review: MATTERS OF THE HEART (The Joffrey Ballet at The Harris Theater)
FROM FRIDA TO FUNK, MATTERS OF THE HEART THRILLS When words fall short of capturing the fullness and depth of life’s experience, there is dance—or more broadly, art itself. That truth was made irrefutably clear last weekend when The Joffrey Ballet joined forces with Harris Theater for Joffrey at the Harris: Matters of the Heart,…
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Dance Review: PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY (2025 Lincoln Center Residency Opening Night)
TAYLOR MADE During his 64-year career, Paul Taylor helped lead, define, and shape American modern dance. Out of his 147 works, the Paul Taylor Dance Company opened its three-week Lincoln Center season last night with one of his final creations, Concertiana, which premiered in 2018—the year of his passing. Paul Taylor’s Concertiana Eleven dancers, clad…
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Dance Review: AN EVENING WITH JOHAN INGER (Gibney Company Up Close at New York Live Arts)
RUNNING IN PLACE AMONG THE STARS: A TRANSFIXING EVENING OF JOHAN INGER “I hate dance reviews,” my friend says to me during intermission. There are vertical trails on her cheeks, wet where her tears made slalom paths moments ago. “What could you say that would describe what we just saw?” I agree with her. I…
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Highly Recommended Event: THE 2025 3ARTS AWARDS CELEBRATION (Harris Theater)
CELEBRATING THE INDESPENSIBILITY OF CHICAGO’S CREATIVES Glowing cultural vibrancy and great world cities are so often intertwined they are effectively one. Scan the globe and nearly every city that enjoys high international prestige harbors a rich, and often dazzling, arts community. Whether it’s Paris, Cape Town, Mexico City, Lisbon, London or Hanoi, the arts explode…
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Dance Review: GRAVITY (Ballet Preljocaj, The Joyce)
Angelin Preljocaj has carved out a daring niche in the dance world, fusing classical ballet with contemporary flair to invent a unique, bold alphabet of movements. Now, the US premiere of Ballet Preljocaj’s Gravity is at The Joyce Theater, and it is an amazing experience, a meditation on the invisible force that binds us all….
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Dance Review: LIMÓN DANCE COMPANY (Joyce)
WHAT TO DO WITH MIDCENTURY MODERNISM? The first piece on the evening bill of the José Limon Dance Company’s residency at the Joyce was Limón’s Chaconne. As the director’s note in the program points out, the chaconne was a Mexican musical style interpreted by European composers. This piece, from 1942, was given a contemporary makeover,…
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