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Dance
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Dance Review: FRIDA (Dutch National Ballet)
FRIDA PEOPLE We live in the age of Frida Kahlo iconography. Distilled to the mere visual suggestion of a unibrow, braided updo, and flower headpiece, her image graces wall murals, tote bags, socks, umbrellas, T-shirts, and all manner of decorative objects the world over. Known during her lifetime primarily as the wife of Mexican muralist…
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Dance Preview: BALLETS WITH A TWIST (Fall 2023 Touring Season Announcement)
Ballets with a Twist Announces its Fall 2023 Touring Season Ballets with a Twist performs Cocktail Hour: The Show New York City-based Ballets with a Twist is excited to announce its fall touring season to Arkansas, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Tour Details September 23, 2023: ACANSA Arts Festival of the South, Little Rock, AR October 28,…
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Dance Recommendation: BIG FIVE OH! (Pilobolus’s 50th Anniversary Tour, The Joyce Theatre in New York)
How lucky is New York? Pilobolus, the groundbreaking, legendary, international dance sensation, is celebrating a half century of radical creativity and boundary pushing. This is one of America’s greatest dance companies, and must be seen for their strength, fluidity and awesome choreography. The extended three-week engagement, featuring three New York premieres, will play The Joyce Theater…
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Dance Review and Commentary: GISELLE (United Ukrainian Ballet, West Coast Premiere)
PETIPA AND POLITICS In college I took one of those life-changing, niche courses that liberal arts schools like to put on their brochures, called Dancing the State: Dance and the Political. In it, we watched Ballet Folklórico de México and dissected how its aesthetics were used in the construction of the Mexican statehood project. We…
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Dance Preview: GISELLE (The United Ukrainian Ballet at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa)
DANCING THROUGH WAR Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center, which has presented world premieres by Alexei Ratmansky for more than a decade — including American Ballet Theatre’s Of Love and Rage (2022), Whipped Cream (2017), The Sleeping Beauty (2015), and Firebird (2012) — once again proves itself as one of the country’s most exciting dance centers by presenting Ratmansky’s all-new full-length production of Giselle, appearing June…
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Dance Review: MEMORYHOUSE (Melissa Barak in collaboration with Los Angeles Ballet at The Broad Stage)
RESTRAINT Oh, restraint, that most pesky of virtues. We all begin our journeys with dance in the same way: with wild abandon, the freedom of children running in tutus or imitating bars of pop songs, or holding hands with our elders in a circle, stepping in a grapevine left or right. We know not restraint,…
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Dance Review: WOKE & LOVE ROCKS (Complexions Contemporary Ballet at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
CORTISOL ROCKSTARS I am an irreverent narrator when it comes to reviewing dance, because I delight in the mischief of disrespecting the convention of separating creation from creator. A work most interests me as either a universe in itself (for the transcendent), or, for everything else, as an expression of a human psyche – its…
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Dance Review: CONCERTO BAROCCO: A BALANCHINE BALLET (American Contemporary Ballet)
BALLET IS WOMAN What is the true nature of beauty? Do objects we find beautiful contain beauty, or, as Plato theorized, do they merely reflect its true heavenly form? These are the questions posed by American Contemporary Ballet’s evening, Concerto Barocco: A Balanchine Ballet. And when I say these are the questions posed, I am…
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Dance Review: DEEP RIVER (Alonzo King LINES Ballet)
THIN LOVE We go to the ballet for bodies. Don’t we? If the dance audience at The Wallis in Beverly Hills, where I saw Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Deep River yesterday (there is one more performance tonight, June 10), were presented with a version of the AMC Theater’s Nicole Kidman promotional trailer, what would she…
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Dance: 2023 BESSIE AWARDS (Nominees Announced; Ceremony on June 4 at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park)
The New York Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City’s premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, today announced the nominees for the 2023 Bessie Awards. This year’s Bessie Awards ceremony will be held on Friday, August 4, at 7:30pm, at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park as part of Lincoln Center’s Summer…
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Dance Review: GISELLE (San Francisco Ballet)
DANCES OF THE DEAD BROUGHT TO STUNNING LIFE Both classic ballet and romantic fantasy, Adolphe Adam’s 1841 masterwork is for a rightly renewed reason a worthy offering by the SF Ballet. Playing the gorgeous War Memorial Opera House through Nov. 5 only, this two-hour treasure, revisioned in 1999 by former artistic director Helgi Tomasson, leaps…
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DANCE REVIEW: BYOULNORRI (DaEun Jung; 2023 Dance at the Odyssey)
PLAYFUL SINGULARITY DaEun Jung‘s Byoulnorri closes Odyssey Theatre Ensemble’s dance festival, 2023 Dance at the Odyssey, with playful austerity. The hour-long concert is performed in two parts, Byoul (별): “star,” a solo performance by the Choreographer herself, and Norri (놀씴): “play’, a four men ensemble work. DaEun Jung, a trained performer of Korean traditional dance,…
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Dance Recommendation: BIG FIVE OH! (Pilobolus’s 50th Anniversary Tour)
Pilobolus, the groundbreaking, legendary, international dance sensation, returns to Pepperdine in Malibu on January 25, 2023 (the company’s 15th time there!), the MAC in Chicagoland On Feb. 5 and many more locations as part of the company’s “Big Five Oh!” tour celebrating a half century of radical creativity and boundary pushing. (See below for cities and…
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Dance Review: THE NUTCRACKER (SF Ballet)
This holiday season all over America ballet companies are performing productions of Peter Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet The Nutcracker. Ironically it made it’s American premiere here in San Francisco in 1944. The SF Ballet is in its 90th year and Nutcracker is its annual favorite. Families of all ages continue to come year after year. For…
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Dance Recommendation: DORRANCE DANCE AT THE JOYCE (3 World Premieres: Rhythms of Being, 45th & 8th, A Little Room)
TAPPING TROUBLES AWAY Michelle Dorrance, founder and artistic director of Dorrance Dance, is one of the most sought after tap dancers of her generation. Her imaginative work, which continually pushes the boundaries of this time-honored form, made her a MacArthur Fellow. Last year on Broadway, she staged the most awesome and original tap routine for…
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Dance Recommendation: INFERNO & BURLESQUE (ACB)
ACB OPENS 11th SEASON WITH TRIPLE THE HORROR If you’re brave, get front-row seats. Eight Performances Only! Did Hell Ever Look This Good? Photo by Victor Demarchelier. American Contemporary Ballet, L.A.’s most daring and satisfying dance company, opens its 11th season on October 7, 2022, with Inferno & Burlesque, a double dose of gothic horror and…
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Recommended Dance: THE LOOK OF LOVE (Mark Morris Dance Group World Premiere at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
A NEW DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF BURT BACHARACH The Look of Love reunites Choreographer Mark Morris and jazz composer Ethan Iverson to create a new work showcasing the music of Burt Bacharach. Co-commissioned by BroadStage, the world premiere of Mark Morris Dance Group’s The Look of Love, an evening of dance to the music…
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Dance Recommendation: CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS (The Joyce)
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS MAKES JOYCE DEBUT FOR PRIDE, 2022 The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street, concludes Pride 2022 with the debut of boundary-shattering movement artist Christopher Williams. The New York premiere of selections from his series of queer interpretations of renowned classical ballets will play The Joyce Theater from June 28-July 3,…
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Dance: SW!NG OUT (National Tour’s West Coast Premiere at The Ahmanson in Los Angeles)
Acclaimed choreographer & Dance Magazine cover star Caleb Teicher brings the best of the swing dance world to the concert stage when the The Music Center welcomes the West Coast premiere of The Joyce Theater’s SW!NG OUT, directed by tap phenom Caleb Teicher (June 24-26, 2022).. With live music by Eyal Vilner’s Big Band, Lindy Hop champions bring the joy, fire…
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Dance Review: MOZART DANCES (Mark Morris Dance Group at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
MO’ MOZART DANCES, PLEASE What a tough day I had last Thursday. No details necessary, but I was so spent it was with worry when I attended Mark Morris’s Mozart Dances at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica that I thought sleep and ennui would be my only partners. Set to three exquisite Mozart piano…
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