Dance

Mark Morris Dance Group‘s The Hard Nut made its U.S. debut at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1991. Thirty-three years later, Mark Morris’s reinterpretation of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker is back at BAM, featuring live music by the MMDG Music Ensemble directed by Colin Fowler, and Brooklyn Music School and Brooklyn Technical High School’s The…

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…

Modern dance was born as a protest, a reaction to the rigid structure of classical ballet. As is evident from my review of the dazzling program Extreme Taylor at the Joyce in June, I couldn’t wait to see the company again, to explore more of their movement vocabulary. Now, the Paul Taylor Dance Company is back with…

MISSA BRAVOS The Limón Dance Company celebrates its 78th season at the Joyce Theater with an epic program that reflects José Limón’s humanist aesthetic: Limón’s The Traitor, Scherzo, Missa Brevis; Doris Humphrey’s Two Ecstatic Themes; and the world premiere of Kayla Farrish‘s The Quake that Held Them All. I enjoyed every minute of it. Even if you’re not a fan of…

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…

IN THE LOWER ROOM A triple bill of unconnected masterpieces showcases the best and worst of “America’s National Ballet Company” George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial, which heads the triple bill of American Ballet Theatre’s Choreographers of the 20th and 21st Centuries program — which opened tonight at Lincoln Center’s Koch Theatre — was choreographed in 1941….