Dance

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….

PILOBOLUS IS re:INVIGORATING In 1971, at Dartmouth College, three non-dance students were asked by their composition teacher to create a dance piece. The students were Jonathan Wolken, Steve Johnson, and Moses Pendleton and they did not shy away from the project; they created a piece called Pilobolus, the name of a mushroom only  ¼ inch…

EXTREME VALUE Paul Taylor Dance Company  returns to the Joyce Theater with  Extreme Taylor, bringing back some of the Maestro’s classic works. The program I saw included  Private Domain  (1969),  Duet  (1964),  Big Bertha  (1970), and  Airs  (1978), four among his most acclaimed works.  Private Domain  opens the show and sets Taylor’s clever vision of light and dark. The music, “Atrees” by  Iannis Xenakis, fits the straightforward movements…