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Dance
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Dance Review: ACROSS THE POND (Joffrey Ballet at the Auditorium Theatre)
BRITAIN’S BALLET FINDS CHICAGO Springing into the season, the Joffrey Ballet’s current visit to the Auditorium Theatre delivers very welcome art — two world premieres and a Chicago first. Across the Pond, with accompaniment by the Chicago Philharmonic conducted by Scott Speck, proves a stirring showcase for three cutting-edge choreographers. It’s an equal opportunity for…
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Dance Review: GRIMM TALES (Ballet Austin)
BEST WHEN IT’S GRIM GRIMM Born in Austin and now living in New York City, artist Natalie Frank created 75 works based on the stories of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Using gouache and chalk pastel, the images are almost a blend of Marc Chagall and Irving Albright. There’s a delicious, nightmarish, psychologically unsettling quality to…
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Dance Review: THE LITTLE MERMAID (San Francisco Ballet at the War Memorial Opera House)
A BIG LITTLE John Neumeier’s multi-cultural fantastical rendition of Han’s Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid has returned in a beautiful production at the San Francisco Ballet in the War Memorial Opera House. Created in 2005 for the Royal Danish Ballet and revised in Hamburg in 2007, Neumeier includes Andersen as the “Poet” guiding and lamenting…
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Dance Review: ASTAIRE DANCES 2: FRED & GINGER (American Contemporary Ballet)
LET’S FACE IT: THIS IS MUSIC AND DANCE The classiest dance company in town offered its longest and most romantic program yet — a combination of Balanchine and Astaire, two of the 20th century’s greatest and most influential choreographers. The great ballet choreographer George Balanchine compared Fred Astaire to Bach, and Baryshnikov claimed Astaire gave him…
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Dance Review: ANNA KARENINA (World Premiere by Joffrey Ballet at the Auditorium Theatre)
LEO TOLSTOY TURNED TO LEAPS AND TWIRLS IN THIS WORLD PREMIERE BALLET MILESTONE So many superlatives to savor. Newly created by 35-year-old wunderkind composer Ilya Demutsky, who replenishes the rhapsodic romanticism of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and genius choreographer Yuri Possokhov, who finds new depths in dance, Anna Karenina, Joffrey Ballet’s first commissioned score, redeemed its promissory notes perfectly…
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Dance Review: MATTHEW BOURNE’S CINDERELLA (International Tour at The Ahmanson in Los Angeles)
IF THE BLITZ FITS… The audacious, eccentric and flashily theatrical choreographer, Matthew Bourne, is a man full of interesting ideas, most of which, under close scrutiny, are fairly half-baked, but prove catnip to dance enthusiasts while driving serious balletomanes to distraction. There’s the famous all-male Swan Lake and a theatricalization of The Red Shoes, the…
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Dance Preview: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO (Musco Center for the Arts)
HUBBA-HUBBA-HUBBARD As one of the world’s most important contemporary dance companies, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago encompasses a vast array of techniques and forms, as well as an understanding of abstract artistry and the emotional nuances of movement. With an exuberant, athletic, and innovative repertoire, Hubbard Street presents performances that inspire, yes, but also challenge how…
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Dance Preview: THE GREAT TAMER (Dimitris Papaioannou at Royce Hall, UCLA)
A CREATOR WHO CAN’T BE TAMED Dimitris Papaioannou, who uses the human body to create vignettes brimming with humor, horror, circus-like stunts and optical illusions, has conceived, visualized, and directed The Great Tamer, a visually stunning and surreal pageant that grapples with the meaning of life, the mystery of death, time, destruction and reconstruction. This surrealistic and…
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Dance & Music Preview: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO & THIRD COAST PERCUSSION (The Wallis)
HUBBA-HUBBA-HUBBARD As one of the world’s most important contemporary dance companies, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago encompasses a vast array of techniques and forms, as well as an understanding of abstract artistry and the emotional nuances of movement. With an exuberant, athletic, and innovative repertoire, Hubbard Street presents performances that inspire, yes, but also challenge how…
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Chicago Dance Review: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO (Season 41 Winter Series at the Harris)
GROUP DYNAMICS SURGE AT HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO Four world premieres, especially crafted by in-house choreographers for the skills and needs of their company colleagues, display a tales-within-tales meld of individuality within synchronicity, a deepening of dance that’s more than conceptual. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s current Winter Series, a part of their ongoing dance(e)volve program,…
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Chicago Dance Review: Christopher Wheeldon’s THE NUTCRACKER (The Joffrey Ballet)
TAKING ANOTHER CRACK: AN UPDATE ON MARIE AND THE GREAT IMPRESARIO No matter how many times you see it, you will ALWAYS be amazed by the gorgeous Nutcracker that Christopher Wheeldon imagined in 2015 for the Joffrey Ballet and the Auditorium Theatre. It’s simply impossible to remember how beautiful it is, so each witnessing is transcendently close…
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Dance Preview: GEORGE BALANCHINE’S THE NUTCRACKER (Miami City Ballet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
CRACK AWAY Miami City Ballet’s new redesign of the magical George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, featuring enchanting new costumes and sets by the Cuban-American artist/designer power couple Isabel and Ruben Toledo, Balanchine’s glorious choreography, and Tchaikovsky’s beloved timeless score, returns to The Music Center, having had its world premiere in Los Angeles last year. Running November 30 through December…
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Dance Review: DON QUIXOTE (Mikhailovsky Ballet)
DANCING AT WINDMILLS It’s surprising for those who have never seen this ballet before, but Don Quixote isn’t really about that legendary knight who is forever battling evil and seeking his Dulcinea. In fact, the Don is only an ancillary character in the ballet, which centers around two young Spanish lovers, Kitri and Basilio, who…
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Theater Review: CIRCOLOMBIA: ACÉLÉRÉ (The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare on Navy Pier)
A COLOSSAL CIRCUS CARAVAN FROM COLOMBIA Three rings do not make a circus, any more than “two boards and a passion” make a play. Sometimes all you need is fifteen performers for sixty power-packed minutes. That’s the fantastic formula working in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s all-purpose Yard space on Navy Pier. Making its North American debut…
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Dance Preview: SUTRA (Alonzo King LINES Ballet at the Wallis in Beverly Hills)
DANCE & MUSIC ROYALTY: KING/HUSSAIN Widely considered a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement, Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain is drenched in Eastern Classicism, yet looks to Western influences to explore and experiment. Meanwhile, choreographer Alonzo King combines principles of transcendental Eastern thinking with the foundation of Western ballet’s classical forms and techniques. Over the past two…
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Music & Dance Preview: ROMEO AND JULIET (LA Phil and L.A. Dance Project at Disney Hall)
A WHOLE NEW DANCE PROJECT WITH LA PHIL Romeo and Juliet is probably Prokofiev’s best dramatic work (I say “probably” because “hearing” the duck being eaten by the wolf in Peter and the Wolf nearly traumatized my childhood). Arguably, it’s his best orchestral work. Positively, it’s his most lyrical, emotional, and deeply moving work. Yet…
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Concert Preview: GREGORY PORTER AND SAVION GLOVER (with Vince Mendoza at the Hollywood Bowl)
OLDIES AND TAP: YOU’D BE NUTS TO MISS THIS CONCERT Jazz singer Gregory Porter certainly has amassed an impassioned and appreciative audience of all ages and races. But ever since double Grammy-winning composer, actor, and soul, jazz, and gospel song stylist released his latest Blue Note recording, Nat “King” Cole & Me, he cemented himself…
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Dance Preview: ISADORA (Segerstrom in Costa Mesa)
DUNKIN’ INTO THE WORLD OF DUNCAN On September 14, 1927, dancer and San Francisco native Isadora Duncan was strangled in Nice, France, when the enormous silk scarf (“which she had worn since she took up communism,” one newspaper reported) somehow blew into the well of the rear wheel on the passenger side of the sportscar she…
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Dance Preview: MOVES AFTER DARK (Disney Hall)
GET YOUR MOVES ON It had to happen one day: L.A. is truly becoming a metropolis, with incredible events difficult to find anywhere else. To wit, the dance world is springing to new heights, and while site-specific dance has been going on for years, The Music Center goes a step further by selecting three L.A.-based…
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Theater/Dance Preview: THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY PROJECT (The Big Show Co. at the Ford Amphitheatre)
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” Author Lois Lowry On June 28 & 29, Ford Theatres, in association with choreographer/director Arianne MacBean and The Big Show Co., will present the world premiere of The Collective Memory Project — an original dance-theatre piece inspired by…
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