Okay, at the very beginning you saw a clip of someone (I think it was Denise from last week) doing a crazy Jitterbug aerial (Jitterbug is a form of Lindy, or East Coast Swing). That is how people are fracturing tibia, etc. — not doing straight ballroom! I know Jewel was injured early on, but I’m sure they were practicing everything that was to come just to give the competitors an introduction. I don’t really know how I feel about the inclusion of these dances with rather difficult lifts and tricks in a show like this, where the vast majority of contestants are well into adulthood and have little dance and / or athletic training. We’ll see how this week’s dances go…

Kym Johnson and David Alan Grier Lindy Hop: Cute. That’s all I can really say though.

Continue reading ‘DANCING WITH THE STARS WEEK 3: LINDY HOP AND ARGENTINE TANGO’

I finally got around to seeing Billy Elliot on Broadway. I’d resisted for a while since I’m not a fan of musical theater — at all — but my friend Mika had an extra ticket and talked me into going with her (by telling me there was a lot of dancing) And she was right — there was. Unbelievably, I actually liked it!

It follows the movie pretty closely, is the story of a boy from a working-class town in Northeast England who, amidst a miners strike his father and older brother are involved in, falls in love with ballet after mistakenly happening in on a dance class — he’s only supposed to be returning some boxing mitts to their proper place but the teacher sees him and asks him to join class, which he does begrudgingly. Once he realizes he’s pretty good at the turns, etc., he’s a goner. Of course his father believes that ballet is for pansies and, besides, the family doesn’t have the money for expensive lessons and admission to the Royal Ballet Academy and all that, but of course it all works itself out throughout the course of the play.

There was a lot of dancing — not only in obvious places like the dance classes and audition, but in the scenes between the striking miners and their clashes with police — in full riot gear, present to protect Scabs — and the ballet students, and Billy. It was really well orchestrated. Go here to see some great performance photos.

I also loved the actor who played Billy’s father, Gregory Jbara. He’s of course the most dynamic character in the whole thing since he’s got a lot of gender prejudices and class issues to overcome, and when he does finally begin to change, to support his son, he really makes you want to cry.

There are three Billy’s — the one on my night was Trent Kowalik, who was pretty good as well. As a dancer he excels at turns. But of course what I was waiting for the whole time was Stephen Hanna, (former) New York City Ballet principal dancer, who plays the older Billy. I was a bit disappointed in the way they used him though. The film ends with the grown-up Billy doing a portion of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, so I was expecting that. But they completely cut it! And I was so upset! I waited all night to see Stephen Hanna do that! Instead they had this rather corny scene in the middle (pictured above) where the little Billy is having a dream and he dances with the image of who he will become — Stephen Hanna. At first it’s nice — they both do some turns and jumps in tandem, and eventually some partnering with Stephen lifting Kowalik into some lovely little fish dives. But then Hanna straps Kowalik into a harness and for about the final third of the piece, the damn harness carries Kowalik all around stage — it’s like circus tricks, not dance!

After that I kept waiting and waiting for more Stephen, but the only other time we see him is in a non-dance scene with the father. It’s actually a pretty funny scene and Hanna’s able to utilize his acting skills — and he’s pretty good, except that he falls back into an American accent at the end of his last line . It’s at the Royal Ballet Academy where Billy is about to try out. Billy’s gone back to change and the father’s left in the hallway alone — still trying to get over his homophobia / fear of male ballet dancers, when along comes Hanna (and then you knew why they needed such a big, muscly dancer), for a smoke. Hanna’s dressed in a blousy 18th Century-style top and tights, so when he takes out a smoke and strikes a nonchalant pose it’s rather funny. Then he starts doing some developpes (slow lift of one leg, with bent knee, into full extension of that leg), lifting his leg right in Jbara’s direction, exposing his crotch. Jbara looks like he’s going to have a heart attack and the audience is cracking up. It ends with Hanna warning Jbara to support his son lest he may lose him to his dream, and the father listens.

(Hanna with Darci Kistler in Peter Martins’ Octet, photo by Paul Kolnik, taken from here)

But no dancing in that scene. So, I was waiting and waiting until the end, and then, curtain call after curtain call, and dance-within-curtain-call after dance-within-curtain-call and it just never happened. Hanna also plays one of the regular strikers and so is dressed for the final dance scene in his construction boots and all, so I’m thinking maybe he just didn’t have time to do a costume change. But then just have another actor / dancer do those scenes — you certainly don’t need a NYCB principal-caliber dancer for that! — and leave Hanna to the ballet! Argh! I realize Hanna took the role knowing what it would entail, but they really could have used him to much better effect, showing audiences what male ballet dancers are really capable of, and what the future Billy will be like.

Anyway, overall I did enjoy it — for those very well choreographed dance scenes I mentioned above and for the actors, particularly Jbara. It’s worth seeing if you get the chance.

…For their May 11th “ballroom” showcase at the Danny Kaye Playhouse. I put ballroom in parenthesis because, though the studio specializes in Latin / Ballroom instruction (and is the studio where I took lessons with Pasha), it seems that they are really expanding, at least for their biannual showcases, which used to be student-oriented and are increasingly centering on pro performances — and pros of all kinds, not just ballroom.

The May 11th show will feature, in addition to Pasha and Anya (!); David Parsons Dance Company performing Caught (regular readers of this blog know how I feel about that dance ); Sabra Johnson, Travis Wall and Twitch from So You Think You Can Dance; the Mark Stuart Eckstein Dance Company (which I don’t know of); choreographer Tricia Brouke’s OtherShore; opera star Aprile Millo; and for ballroom, the EXCELLENT Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova, top American Smooth contenders J.T. Thomas and Tomas Mielnicki, and (the very good, very sexy) former Latin junior champs Manuel Favilla and Karolina Paliwoda.

Expected guest attendees include Baryshnikov (!), Desmond Richardson (!), Edie Falco, Susan Sarandon, Cynthia Nixon, Mickey Rourke, Barbara Walters, Antonio Banderas, Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, and more — including judges and choreographers from SYTYCD (which DTS studio owners Tony Meredith and Melanie LaPatin choreograph for as well).

I’m happily stunned that my ballroom studio has become kind of this major outlet for popular concert dance in the city!

There’s also an after-party at the studio, as well as a pre-show reception at the Danny Kaye Playhouse for Angel on a Leash, which the program is benefitting. Angel on a Leash sponsors rehabilitative dogs (for people with seeing, hearing disabilities, etc.)  Go here for more info.

I saw this yesterday — one of the best films I’ve honestly seen in as long as I can remember. It’s a perfect tragicomedy for our times. It’s about a couple of Japanese businessmen who lose their jobs to outsourcing, and the chaos — sometimes devastating but usually sadly hilarious — that ensues. But don’t worry if you hate dark comedies — it ends on a beautiful note — literally.

If it’s playing anywhere near you (and it’s one of those small arthouse films, so unfortunately, it may not be), definitely do not miss it!

(photo by Angele, from Takehiro Ueyama’s Love Stories, taken from A Year With TAKE Dance website)

So, last weekend I, along with several other bloggers, was invited to see the film, A Year With TAKE Dance, by Damian Eckstein, about the small company TAKE Dance, which premiered as part of the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival at the Village East Cinemas in the East Village. I’ve seen TAKE Dance a couple of times, and have written about them here.  Artistic director and choreographer, Takehiro Ueyama, originally from Toyko, danced with Paul Taylor for a while, before starting his own company in 2004. What I’ve seen of his work so far I’ve really enjoyed –it’s mesmerizing, with very sharply drawn, evocative images, much of them stunning, most of the movement slow and really drawn out. His dances remind me a bit of Shen Wei’s best work. But you have to have a lot of patience! There isn’t much fast-paced dancing. Sitting through one of his dances is kind of like the equivalent of watching a very experimental film — mainly for very serious lovers of that art form.

So, I was kind of surprised to learn that a film had been made of his small, rather experimental company. I learned at the premiere, when the director, Damian Eckstein, spoke a bit beforehand, that he’d worked with the company many times, mainly composing music for them. So, there you have it.

Anyway, several of my fellow bloggers have already written about it: Philip, Taylor, and Ariel. At first I found myself disliking it, but as it went on, I liked it more and more and I left the theater thinking it a success. The biggest problem is that most of Ueyama’s dances are the kind that really don’t show up so well on film. We’ve had umpteenth discussions about dance on film and TV, which kind of dance does best (ie: flashy Latin ballroom, flashy hip hop), etc., on Apollinaire Scherr’s blog, and most of Ueyama’s choreography — particularly those dances shown first on the film — One, Looking For Water — fits in the not so great on a 2-dimensional screen category. The music is so light as to almost be nonexistant, the movement is slow slow slow — almost like Butoh, except, well, faster than Butoh, but you know what I mean. Every movement is kind of drawn out to its maximum potential, and you really need to see it in person to see all of its miraculous dimensions. The two-dimensionality of film is just so reductive, you lose so much, and then since it’s so flat, you begin to get bored as a watcher.

Fortunately, there’s so much more than just filmed versions of the dances. Once Eckstein really begins to interview the dancers, we start to get a sense of their personalities, and the company comes to life. But it seems like he went chronologically — like his earliest filmed segments are those which appear earliest in the film — when the dancers are not used to having a camera pointed at them and are reserved. I worry that the places where they lighten up and begin to have fun come a little too late.

In viewing the film, I tried hard to put myself in the position of someone who knew nothing about this company, who knew nothing about dance; since film tends to reach much wider audiences than does dance, there likely will be many who see it who aren’t dance people. And I wonder how Waiting for Guffman-esque it may appear to them up front. After we’ve seen all of this extremely slow-moving, extremely subtle movement, then we see the dancers looking straight at the camera talking about their work with such serious, deadpan expressions on their faces. Like all of this slow movement is hyper challenging. It is, as a matter of fact, but I wonder if I was not a dance person and might not be able to see that on screen if I’d think it was a Christopher Guest-esque satire. Most of the audience was filled with TAKE fans and friends so what a general audience might think was impossible to tell from the opening-night crowd.

But about halfway through, the dancers start to feel more free, laughing, making fun of Ueyama’s hilarious expressions of which he is often unaware, his unique “Japanenglish”, his personality, his cryptic instructions that you’d have to have worked with him for some time to understand, the way one dancer completely baffles everyone by shaving his formerly shaggy head the night before a big performance (the before and after pics of this one — if I was his partner, don’t know if I’d recognize him up there onstage!) — basically everyone’s naturally sweet personality, their idiosyncracies, come out and it becomes a company of real people that everyone, regardless of dance background, can relate to.

Jill Echo, a former Paul Taylor dancer who now works with TAKE as a dancer as well as rehearsal director, talks about getting fired from Paul Taylor, and how embarrasing that was since her dismissal was made rather public in Dancemaker, an award-winning, popular documentary about Paul Taylor. You feel horrible for her. (I remember seeing the documentary and feeling sorry for the dancer who was fired — because the other dancers kind of went on and on and on about it — how awful it would be to be thirty and unemployed, what’s she going to do, etc. etc. — but I didn’t remember the dancer’s name and never would have known it was Echo if she didn’t say so here.) She says Ueyama told her not to worry, she was beautiful, she wasn’t going to leave dance, she was going to work with him now. We also see James Samson (current Paul Taylor dancer, whom SLSG has crushed on here) and former, retired PT dancer Andy LeBeau (and Samson’s boyfriend) speak about being able to dance together again with TAKE. You end up really liking Ueyama for giving people these kinds of chances.

And then at the end, Eckstein shows clips from Ueyama’s dances that are more suited to film – his fast-paced, high-energy Linked, and Love Stories, in picture above (which was inspired by a Magritte painting).

So the film went out on a good note and overall, I found it very entertaining and enjoyable. I do wonder what others thought, particularly non-dance people. If anyone happens to find my blog through an internet search, please do comment! Find out more about the company here, and view a trailer of the film here.

Maks and Denise’s Samba: Okay that was awful. Sorry but it was. She was hopping and running and skipping and doing just about everything but Samba. It is the hardest of the Latin dances — Len’s right, but still. I agree with Bruno that it wasn’t so hot, but don’t know if I’d call if flat as a “waffle”. And I agree with Carrie Ann– how frightened and stiff did she look?! During those Samba rolls, it looked like he was pulling her on top of him, then pushing himself onto her. Like she was the cat being forced to dance with Pepe le Peu. Interesting choreography from Maks — the one-legged hops, the waving his chest toward hers, flirtatiously. Extremely corny having him come to practice dressed as a Carmen Miranda-esque sambista to get her to stop being so serious. And don’t tell adults to feel and not think, Maks! Can’t be done. You learn by feeling as a child, as an adult you have to think; you’ve lived too much of your life by using your brain by then.

Chuck and Julianne’s Foxtrot: That was pretty good. Fairly suave, though he looked a bit of a goof on those side by sides in the middle. A little too much on his toes, I think was what it was. And it was pigeon-toed at that. He just looked a little Pee Wee Herman-ish. But overall, very sophisticated and he looked fairly comfortable in the close hand-hold. Yeah, Carrie Ann just said on the grapevine it looked like he hunched over a bit — maybe that’s what made it Pee Wee-like to me. He’s better at Standard than Latin.

Continue reading ‘Dancing With the Stars, Week Two: Samba and Foxtrot’

Photo by Lois Greenfield, from here.

(Late) reminder: DanceBrazil’s live webcast begins tonight (Sunday) at 6:45 EST. Go here for deets.

Alyssa and I saw them Friday night at the Skirball Center and Alyssa said it was they best dance event I’d ever invited her to I greatly enjoyed it too. There were two pieces, Ritmo and Inura ( the second having its world premiere). Ritmo (from 2008, choreographed by company head Jelon Vieira) is what they’re live-casting tonight. I’d reviewed it earlier and liked it then, but they did something to improve it substantially. I loved it Friday night. I really can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s so worth watching, believe me. It’s basically just a wonderful celebration of Brazilian dance — mainly capoeira, which is a martial arts dance originating in the 16th and 17th centuries by slaves and celebrates the slave’s ability to outsmart the master. Some may see capoeira as a bunch of “tricks” but I think that is a ballet or perhaps modern hip hop mentality (I say ballet because I think those critics are likening the astounding jumps, mid-air turns, and balances on one’s neck, to ballet’s barrel turns, huge jetes, bizillions of fouettes, etc). But the “tricks” here are not so much to wow the audience, but to celebrate the slave’s triumph, his ability to mentally and physically “out-trick” his captors. But there’s more — there’re also a few Samba sections , and some parts comprised of beautiful combination modern / Afro-Brazilian movement. In one section, a dancer does what I’ve heard in hip hop referred to as a caterpillar. But he does it so much more poetically than I’ve ever seen; his body gains such momentum on the repeated up and down moves, he begins to look like an ocean wave.

Inura, choreographed by Carlos Dos Santos Jr. which made its world premiere this season at Skirball (but is not being live-broadcast today), is a celebration of Exu, who, in Afro-Brazilian Yoruba tradition, the program notes state, is the messenger between the world of the people and that of the gods, and also the guardian of the energy that moves the universe. Inura is “the manifestation of the Exu energy that exists in each of us.” There are scenes of worship, of a goddess being exalted, raised high by a group of men, of a prince and princess flirting, then consummating their relationship, with a near-naked Yul Brynner-looking man sitting atop a mirror beside them, in various poses accentuating his skin, his musculature, in a kind of celebration of humanity, perhaps representing the human being they will create?

The movement in Inura is contemporary with of course a definite Afro-Brazilian bent. The company is comprised of four female dancers (at least ideally; Vieira has only two for now), four male dancers, and four capoeira artists and it’s interesting to see how he and the other choreographers who work with him use the capoeira artists in a contemporary dance. In one scene, there are several bodies supine on the ground, as if sleeping, and the capoeira men come out and dance over and around them — jumping over them, kicking out in all directions — as if they are protecting them in their sleep from either captors or evil spirits. One man does in back of the group what in hip hop would be termed a “flare” and it looks like as he’s spinning around down there, he’s just whipping all those evil spirits right away.

Afterward, there was a short question and answer session with the artists and one woman remarked how “the youth of today” — meaning, today’s young hip hop / break dancers, are using many of these same moves, totally unaware of their origins, thinking mistakenly that they’re creating them. It was exactly what I was thinking, and judging by all the nods and “um – hums!” was a thought shared by many in that auditorium. She continued, saying how sad it was that these young dancers don’t seem aware of this aspect of their roots — this African slave dance centuries old. So true. Perhaps dance elitists who trash hip hop and break-dancing don’t understand that either.

(photo of Sean Mahoney in Arden Court, by Tom Caravaglia)

So, a little season wrap-up of Paul Taylor Dance Company before my computer crashes (was trying to avoid taking it in, I’m so dependent on it, but think I’m going to have to…)

I liked many of the dances — the 60s era Changes (set to music by the Papas and the Mamas), Mercuric Tidings, the hilarious Offenbach Overtures, but my favorites ended up being Arden Court and Esplanade — which I think are beloved by many Paul Taylor fans. And I can see why. They are beautiful dances, very lyrical, very musical, but also very American, and with a good deal of humor. Both contained movement that was light and lyrical, but very grounded. Dancers do a lot of quick traversing of the stage (particularly in Esplanade) and they run with knees deeply bent, toes pointed forward, hair and garments blowing in the breeze they create, making for grand, sweeping patterns. Knees are often bent in a jump, feet flexed during a kick. It’s almost the antithesis of ballet — at least classical. These are real, human bodies — not ethereal beings seemingly suspended in the air, heaven-bound– but people doing human things. It’s like a celebration of being human. It has a kind of poetry to it, although not the same poetry as ballet.

There’s also a good deal of humor. A man will lie down and a woman will run up and over him, usually playfully. At one point during Arden Court, all dancers are lined up at the back of the stage, raising their arms, holding hands. But one man chooses to do a handstand instead, lifting his feet high in the air. The dancers immediately to his right and left look at him like he’s nuts, then kind of shrug, laugh, and lock fingers with his toes. It’s amusing and the audience giggles but it’s also kind of a celebration of American ideals: free-thinking, independence, individuality.

Both are more “movement for movement’s sake” pieces rather than linear narratives, although in Esplanade, the mood shifts several times from sweetly frolicking to more sobering, the more sobering parts seeming to tell the story of a family member — a daughter — who is lost; the mother fraught with worry and then sorrow, the father searching desperately for her. But then the mood shifts back, becomes more cheerful and celebratory, as male dancers toss the women between them, like a game of catch (in which the women are willing, excited participants), then dancers run crazy fast across stage, sliding when they reach a corner, like they’re having the times of their lives. I was thinking when I saw those slides how much they looked like runners sliding into home base in baseball. I’d live-tweeted on my way home from the theater that I loved that dance, and when I got home there was a reply to me from one of my Twitter friends saying how much they loved the “baseball slides.” I love it!

There’s also this earlier part where a dancer kind of hop-scotches over a group of dancers lying prone, shown here:

(photo Tom Caravaglia)

Anyway, I really enjoyed the season and am very thankful I got to go so many times. I’m a lifelong balletomane and I’ve always seen modern as kind of  “incorrect ballet.” No turnout, frequently bent knees, no pointe — how can it be?! (Alvin Ailey had its own special appeal, with its combo of African and American and its unique themes). But now I see the beauty of American.

So, if I’m slow in posting or approving comments for the next week, it may be because my computer had to go to hospital…

Dance Brazil, who will be performing at the Skirball Performing Arts Center at NYU March 19-22, will be webcasting live part of their show on the 22nd. Ritmos, which I reviewed here, will be broadcast at 6:45 EST. You can watch either at Dance Tech or Dance Brazil’s website. This is a very popular dance troupe here in New York and I’m so glad they’re taking advantage of the internet in this way to reach new audiences. I hope more dance companies can follow suit. If you can watch, do let me know what you think!

Sorry this post is late! I went out with friends to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day last night and stayed out a bit later than planned Happy belated St. Patrick’s Day, everyone.

So, DWTS had its first dance-off last night. Belinda Carlisle and Jonathan Roberts and Steve Wozniak and Karina Smirnoff were the bottom two and thus required to dance. Both did their Monday-night routines: Belinda and Jonathan the Salsa and Steve and Karina the Quickstep. And I think both received the same actual scored: 17 — although the judges were much more kind to Steve and Karina than Belinda and Jonathan. I thought Belinda was cute, but she still didn’t get the hip action right (of course, you’re not going to be able to get something like that down perfectly overnight — literally overnight) in that it still didn’t come from the floor, working through the foot, and the shoulders and back muscles weren’t involved. So she was “shaking it” like the judges said, but not properly. And I agreed with them that Steve did improve. Somehow he looked more at ease and was more smooth.

I’m sad to see Belinda go because I think she could have improved but I’m glad Steve stayed. There’s something sweet and sympathetic about him that makes me want to root for him and I think he’s trying very hard, seems like he’s having fun out there, and he has a good attitude about the whole thing. He seems to have a strong sense of self and isn’t going to let the competition-nature of the show get to him.

I like that they’re now doing a dance-off. So the couple still has a chance to redeem itself and possibly keep itself from being booted. So going into that results show they probably don’t feel so powerless. But, I guess unlike with So You Think You Can Dance, here the judges’ votes are still only counting for half of that final vote instead of the whole. So, I guess depending on how many audience votes they received the night before, they may or may not still have a chance.

Beyond that, I liked Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, liked that group dance — Julianne Hough is such a performer, she really shines out there — but didn’t care for the Macy’s Hall of Fame dance. That routine looked kind of chaotic to me. And, with Cameron Mathison picking up Bruno’s “dry cleaning” — a pile of thongs — and then the female contestants comparing how many times they’d been centerfolds, I feel like this show sometimes has the tendency to turn into a goofy Benny Hill sketch. I think that’s the person I’m thinking of — that British comedian from the 70s who’d make the corny sexual jokes that were so taboo-breaking to the British audiences back then but that now you just want to roll your eyes at and think “how ridiculously immature”…

Steve-O’s injured, but they’re going to wait until later to let us know what that means.

Holly Madison and Dmitry Chaplin Quickstep: Well, she’s cute. It looked a lot like he was kind of pulling her around the floor and she was just hopping without really having the steps down pat. But she hasn’t had as much training as the rest, so there’s that to consider. I agree with Len that her frame was part of the problem — she didn’t have a firm center and that’s why it looked like he wasn’t leading, but dragging her. I don’t think she’ll get kicked off first. I think she can improve.

David Allen Grier and Kym Johnson’s Salsa: Uh, it was okay. I mean, it’s so hard to judge amateurs learning to dance in adulthood. He looked uncomfortable — I mean with the dance form, with the rhythm and speed. But he looked like he was having fun, which is part of the battle. Hmmm, he might be first to go tomorrow night, depending on how audiences feel.

Denise Richards and Maks Chmerkovskiy’s Quickstep:

Continue reading ‘DANCING WITH THE STARS, SEASON EIGHT, WEEK TWO’

(photo of Ethan Stiefel by Richard Calmes, from NYTimes)

Last night the Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process event centered on Ethan Stiefel’s new dean-ship of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (which is both a high school and now a university as well). Stiefel is of course a famous ABT principal, star of both Center Stage movies, and ran the summer program Stiefel and Students / Stiefel and Stars, out on Martha’s Vineyard, which my friend Alyssa and I went to a couple of years ago. It was hosted by blogger / dance writer and photographer (and former ABT dancer and NC School of the Arts alum) Matt Murphy, and also included choreographer Larry Keigwin (artistic director of Keigwin + Company), who was the recipient of the school’s first residency under Stiefel.

It was a fun evening. Discussion centered around Ethan’s decision to take on the position, in light of the fact that he’s still dancing (he’d had several surgeries on both knees, knew he wanted to do something like this at some point but stressed about when was proper time to do it), his new schedule (now waking at 6:30 — as opposed to 11 am when he use to wake as a dancer — to take class, then teach a couple of classes, then do all manner of administrative / financial / directorial things – -not easy tasks in light of current economic crisis, and still try to find time for his own rehearsals), and just generally his teaching and directorial aesthetics (he’d come up with eight “initiatives” to instill a culture and sense of identity in the school, the last of which Matt read — which was to encourage students to be inspired by both art and life.) Gia Kourlas has a good article in the Times that summarizes all of this as well.

Keigwin joined Matt and Ethan for the last quarter or so of the panel, and he spoke about his residency, how he’d choreographed a new work both on the students and his own company simultaneously, what it was like to work with students, and what it was like to be out of NY. I’d never heard him speak before and he’s very personable, fun, and chatty with a good sense of humor (which doesn’t surprise me — his work is largely humorous and accessible as well). He talked about the company being beyond thrilled with the washing machines and the cooking space (if you don’t get out of New York much, this kind of surprise happens!) and so enjoyed performing a lot of domestic activities. He was cute! And Ethan was his usual self — his completely understated, deadpan style of talking oozing with sexiness and manly charm. Before introducing one of his students’ performances — of the Four Cygnets in Swan Lake – he explained the girls wouldn’t have the swans’ usual hairpieces: “We got a lot going on and … we just didn’t get that done in time,” he said with a smile and a shrug. Somehow the way he said it just gave everyone the giggles, which, honestly, often happens when the man speaks.

Anyway, we saw Tangled Tango, a modern piece by Dianne Markham, a contemporary choreographer at the school, the pas de deux and coda from Le Corsaire, which Ethan staged, the Four Cygnets from Swan Lake staged by Nina Danilova, and August Bournonville’s The Jockey Dance, also staged by Ethan.

Finally, we ended with Keigwin’s Natural Selection (a modern piece), which totally blew me away. The Keigwin was based on Darwin, survival of the fittest and all that, and was so stunning, filled with very difficult partnering, lifts, students crawling around on the floor, clawing at the ground and each other, lashing out, really having at each other. (So, not quite his usual humorous piece) A guy crawled around with a girl wrapped around him, underneath him. At one point, it slowed, several dancers huddled around each other in a group, each kind of resting, momentarily, putting his / her ear to the back in front of them, perhaps comforting the other, perhaps trying to determine whether his / her heart was still beating, lungs still rising, to determine whether they’d “won”. Then a girl came rushing at them, climbed right over the huddle and jumped right onto the wall in back of them. Someone crawled after her and pushed her back to the ground. Keigwin’s signature move then ensued: a group of male dancers lifted her and she bent sideways, and ran alongside the back wall. The audience was wowed. But more importantly, I think, it was such a wonderful piece for students. I mean, what better way to teach them partnering, how to work with each other, how to be dramatic, how to make the meaning of a work come alive. I loved it!

(other dancers performing that move, photographer unknown, image taken from MySpace, here)

My other favorites were: the Four Cygnets — whoa, that was PERFECTLY done! Those girls — Tessa Blackman, Maya Joslow, Amy Saunder, and Lauren Sherwood — should be so proud of themselves; and Le Corsaire — but of course I’m a sucker for that kind of bravura dancing. I was really afraid, holding my breath the whole time with that one — I mean that stage is soooo small for all that leaping and those insanely high lifts. The two dancers — Claire Kretzschmar and Kristopher Nobles (who looked like a young Gillian Murphy and Jose Carreno respectively!) did splendidly on their own. I couldn’t help but giggle during Nobles’s huge, stage-encompassing leaps and Kretzschmar’s beautiful continuous fouettes and the gorgeously high lifts — all wonderfully executed — except because of said miniscule stage, her hand almost took a light out on one such spectacular lift. There was a tiny bit of fumbling on some of the partnering — the assisted pirouettes and the promenade, but I was actually glad for the audience to understand how insanely hard those things are. People think that’s the easy stuff — and the lifts are the hard parts — but the assisted pirouettes and promenades, when the girl is totally off her center of gravity and the guy has to help keep her centered, are some of the hardest aspects of partnering. Now maybe Met orchestra peeps will not be so confused when the young dance students in family circle go wild for Marcelo the great’s ten bizillion one-handed turns with Julie Kent

Here’s a video of the Four Cygnets, here’s some classic Corsaire (they didn’t do all of this insanity, but you get the idea), and here is The Jockey Dance (it was performed last night by two boys, Devin Sweet and Shane Urton).

The Jockey Dance was fun too — one of those dances that looks deceptively easy, but you can tell is really hard, with all the bouncing jumps, playful competitiveness– using a whip no less, and fast footwork.

Gillian Murphy (ABT prima ballerina, Ethan’s girlfriend, and NC School of the Arts alum) was there too. Poor thing had to sit in the critics’ section! Luckily Sir Alastair was not there… The program repeats tonight, but is sold out.

I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with my blog lately, but it seems to be doing some rather odd things. For one, it’s inexplicably placed the sidebar at the bottom of the main page (though on all other pages it’s normal). So, if you’re on the main page and need to find something on the blogroll or do a search, please scroll all the way down. It’s also doing other crazed things like not allowing me to properly categorize new links (so, all links that I’ve added in the past few weeks are under “Other” all the way down at the bottom, even if they should be under “Dance: ballet,” etc.) It’s also inexplicably publishing posts before I hit the “publish” button, so sorry if something looks half done (it probably is). And, finally, comments are weird — some are going to spam without me sending them there and some are just not posting. Hopefully everything will work out. I apologize for the inconvenience which is hopefully only momentary! Methinks WordPress 2.7 is great in theory but has some real kinks…

(above dancing in …Byzantium, photo by Tom Caravaglia)

This is my profund thought of the day. Sorry, it’s Saturday morning and it’s been a long week.

Anyway, I do think Samson has an expansive quality to his dancing that makes him very compelling to watch, and the quintessential Paul Taylor dancer. I remember noticing him in TAKE (his headshot is at the bottom of that linked-to post, by the way). The way he makes broad, sweeping movements, the way he makes use of the stage, the fullness and breadth.

Last night was ...Byzantium, Changes, and Arden Court, the latter two of which I loved, particularly the last, which was really lovely and made me realize what it is about Paul Taylor that people love. More coming soon!

In the meantime, I’m off to my last Paul Taylor performance of the season. Sadly.

I am continuing to get emails from members of the FDNY over this, accusing me of making the whole thing up. Why would I do that? I was obviously really upset about it, which is why I wrote about it. Why are they so threatened and unable to take criticism? And why not limit comments to the post?

Well, the wonderful James Wolcott, whose writerly support I’m always so immensely thankful for, found the story compelling and quoted from it, so it’s not like they can harass me into taking it down.

(photo of Commedia by Erin Baiano)

(photo by John Ross, of Commedia)

Last weekend’s Works and Process event at the Guggenheim focused on Christopher Wheeldon’s recent ballet, Commedia, and the costume and set designers, Isabel Toledo and Ruben Toledo, respectively.

Isabel Toledo is of course best known for this dress:

(photographer unknown, image taken from Huffington Post) — Michelle Obama’s inauguration dress. Interestingly, we learned at the event that she found out Obama was wearing the dress just as Wheeldon’s Morphoses was premiering the ballet at the Sydney Dance Festival in Australia. (she was with the company there; we saw some footage of that, shot by Wheeldon on his point and shoot).

Commedia, which I’ve wrote about briefly here, is a sweet ballet in the style of Italian Commedia dell’arte and involves a set of traveling performers. Wheeldon made it in honor of the centenary this year of Ballets Russes (you may have seen the excellent documentary on that company that showed here a couple of years ago and is now on DVD); Commedia will be performed again when Morphoses returns this fall to Sadler’s Wells in London and then NY City Center. Commedia is set to a score by Stravinsky, which Michel Fokine had used for his ballet, Pulcinella, which Ballets Russes performed.

The Toledos designed the costumes and stage sets, and it was really interesting hearing the three talk about their collaboration. Isabel was very personable, very chatty, and though she’s Cuban-born, her accent sounded perfectly American. She talked about how much more difficult it was than she expected to design costumes for a dance

Continue reading ‘ISABEL TOLEDO AND CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON AT GUGGENHEIM’

My first guest blogger!

Christopher Atamian, who I met recently while watching Complexions at the Joyce, is a very accomplished arts writer. He writes regularly for Dance Magazine, and for the Daily Candy-esque (but far better!) arts e-letter eCognoscente (which he co-founded). He’s also the former dance critic for the New York Press and has written for the New York Times, among other leading publications. Chris has been kind enough to write a full review of the GroundWorks performance I posted about very briefly.

(I don’t know what kind of “dance publication” this is, by the way. Can’t figure it out.) Anyway, here’s the review:

Contemporary Dance Theater…Created from the Ground Up…in Cleveland, no less…Who knew? (Or: The Little Dance Company That Could)

Or if this were a “mainstream dance publication”: GroundWorks DanceTheater brought its unique mixture of subtle humor, intelligent choreography, and vigorous movement to the West End Theater, March 5-9, 2009.

By Christopher Atamian

Less is sometimes more, indeed. In the wonderfully intimate and strangely proportioned West End Theater (i.e. thirty-foot domed ceilings and decorative arches overlooking a mere 84 seats and a semi-circular dance floor the size of my back pocket), the Cleveland-based company presented a charming and sometimes clever New York début—think classically-influenced movement set to contemporary and new music. It’s hard to judge five dancers on a shoestring budget making what was by all accounts remarkable use of their tiny dance area. The company members are obviously quite talented—one wonders what their performances would look like with more elaborate sets and costumes and a few more dancers? Could GroundWorks evolve into a more important presence in the dance world?

Continue reading ‘GUEST BLOGGER CHRIS ATAMIAN REVIEWS GROUNDWORKS’

(above photo of Beloved Renegade by Wiley Price)

Saturday night I saw Paul Taylor’s 2008 dance, Beloved Renegade, which is having its New York premiere this season, receiving rave reviews from the critics and bloggers (some of which I linked to here).

I liked but didn’t love it and it could have been because my expectations were high, or because part of it reminded me of his earlier Company B, which I loved (and which I believe is his masterpiece). It’s set to Gloria (choral music) by Francis Poulenc and I found it to be an expressionistic piece based on poet Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. At the top of the program notes on the dance, are Whitman’s words from Leaves: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” And each section is titled after a section of that long poem: “I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul,” “I sing the body electric,” “I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,” etc.

There’s kind of a poetic figure, dressed in all white and danced by the very compelling Michael Trusnovec, who mainly, for the first part, watches others dance — a young, playful couple, an older couple, — and it’s like he’s reflecting on his own life, or keenly observing the lives of others to record, reflect on, analyze (which is what writers do, after all). It doesn’t seem as if he knows what will happen beforehand, and he seems devastated when the boy of the young couple dies — perhaps in the war. There’s a sad scene where several soldier-types crawl on the ground toward Trusnovec’s poet. He helps one halfway up, cradles him in his arms, before he dies. Whitman was a medic in the Civil War so this section is likely an expression of that.

And that’s where I couldn’t get Company B out of my mind.

Continue reading ‘PAUL TAYLOR’S BELOVED RENEGADE’

Last night at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Square, Mikhail Baryshnikov talked briefly with New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella about his new book of photos of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Merce My Way. (I love the title, by the way).

The talk was brief (about half an hour) but pretty good. But, honestly, I had a very hard time getting over my anger at Barnes & Noble. I arrived early in order to get a good seat up front, knowing (hoping at least) it would be crowded. But on my way in, I was stopped by a B&N employee. She said they were giving “preference” to people who purchased his book, which cost $36. She pointed me to the cash register, set up, conveniently, right next to the entrance.

I was so mad. There was such a crowd already, it was pretty clear “preference” meant that unless you were buying a book, you weren’t getting in. And in this economy, $40 is a lot to spend when you’re not expecting it. Honestly, I found it a really sleazy, unfair corporate practice to take advantage of his fame like that to sell books. A lot of people must have come from a ways away to see him, and you’re not really going to walk away if you’ve traveled. People were standing around looking like they didn’t know what to do, hesitantly withdrawing their wallets and picking up a book. “We’re a couple, can we get in on one book?” I heard someone ask the people at the door.

I mean, this was advertised as a regular talk / author reading event, which are always free. Nothing in the adverts (at least the ones I saw) said anything about having to purchase a book. As Ron Hogan (of the pub / book blogs Galley Cat and Beatrice) tweeted me (and damn, was I a mad tweeter last night), “seriously. if bookstores want to pull that crap, let them charge $40 IN ADVANCE and include the book w/admission.”

Just as I was getting mad about missing Bill T. Jones (who was giving a talk downtown) for this b.s., I saw my friend Monica Wellington (who I met through Philip). They’d agreed to let her buy the Joan Acocella book instead, which was less expensive. She told them at the door we were together, so they let me in. Thank you thank you, Monica!!

Anyway, the talk was pretty good, albeit short (about half an hour). I’d never heard him speak before, other than giving a brief sound byte on a pre-recorded interview. He is, as expected, charming and smart, though he talks very slowly, thinks hard about his words as if he’s always too far ahead of himself, struggles with English, and digresses frequently. None of which were a big deal, and his digressions often led to entertaining little tidbits.

Continue reading ‘BARYSHNIKOV TALK GOOD BUT I AM PISSED AT BARNES & NOBLE’

Yay, tonight is here! I’m ridiculously excited, even though I wasn’t in love with last season. So, have decided to live blog. Upstairs Godzilla unfortunately just came home and is whacking her tail all about, crashing into walls, thundering down on my ceiling / her floor. She must be excited about the show too.

Oh well; I’ve turned on the closed-captioning.

Shawn Johnson trips on her way down the stairs during introductions. Doesn’t fall or anything. Kind of funny.

Continue reading ‘LIVE BLOGGING DANCING WITH THE STARS SEASON EIGHT PREMIERE’

(photo by David Rodgers taken from here).

Now that Sebastien and Roberto and cohorts have, evilly, fled New York City for Washington DC, poor SLSG has had no choice but to look elsewhere for worthy crush objects. Quite happily, she has found one in this new Paul Taylor guy!

Seriously, I noticed this one right away in the first piece on Saturday’s program, Mercuric Tidings, a fun, flighty, pure movement / music-made-visual dance set to Franz Schubert. Apuzzo was sprightly and precise and had great form, but was also very animated and theatrical.

I nearly burst out laughing when I looked at his bio in the program because I always go for the dramatic types!

Continue reading ‘SEASON CRUSH: PAUL TAYLOR’S MICHAEL APUZZO’

Please excuse the blurry photo; I took it on the escalator last night at Barnes and Noble, where I went after Paul Taylor (review soon!) Thankfully I decided to visit the bookstore; I hadn’t known about this, even though I’m on B&N’s events mailing list…

So, this Tuesday, March 10th, Joan Acocella (New Yorker dance critic) will be in conversation with Mikhail Baryshnikov at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Square (66th and Broadway) to discuss Baryshnikov’s new book of photos of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Merce My Way.

But same night same time, Bill T. Jones is giving a talk at Skirball. Now what?

For people who are interested in learning ballroom dance and don’t have access to a studio (or do have access but would rather learn in the privacy of your home), the Ballroom Dance Channel (a website begun by several Dancing Wtih the Stars pro dancers) is offering downloadable lessons that you can watch via computer, or, apparently now via an iphone as well. I was given a little preview of two of the basic lessons: the samba and the salsa.

Continue reading ‘BALLROOM DANCE CHANNEL’S ONLINE DANCE LESSONS’

(photo of De Suenos by Tom Caravaglia)

So, Paul Taylor season is currently underway at New York City Center. I’ll be going several times next week and will be writing more then, but last week I saw three dances: Funny Papers, De Suenos (Of Dreams), and De Suenos Que Se Repiten (Of Dreams That Keep Recurring) — the third a continuation of the second. The first is a humorous piece from 1994 based on newspaper comics, with sections entitled I’m Popeye the Sailor Man and I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones. The two Dreams pieces, from 2007, like real dreams, ranged from funny to nonsensical to ominous, then back to funny again and were populated by characters like a faun (above), a “golden girl” / angelic character tiptoeing around with a golden crown / halo atop her head, righting all the wrongs created by a devil, peasant women selling flowers and the women or men who buy them, and some underworld urchins who go to battle. I didn’t find any of these pieces tremendously profound, but they were funny and entertaining and often contained surprises both in movement and character-type — not at all cliched.

Paul Taylor is of course one of the masters of American modern dance, loved by most critics and dance fans. My experience with his work thus far has been limited mainly to American Ballet Theater’s production last season of his Company B, which I loved. So I greatly look forward to seeing more next week. The company performs through March 15th. Go here for more info and tickets.

(photo by Gadi Dagon, borrowed from here).

Wednesday night I went to see the popular Israeli dance troupe, Batsheva Dance Company, at Brooklyn Academy of Music. My main experience with Batsheva has been taking a Gaga Class (artistic director and choreographer Ohad Naharin’s unique movement training) by Gaga-trained dancers at Cedar Lake Studios, and then seeing that company perform Naharin’s DecaDance ( a collection of his works over the past 10 years). This was the first time I’ve ever seen a piece by Naharin on his own dancers.

Maybe because I loved DecaDance so much (see above link), I was a bit disappointed with Max. The dancers are absolutely incredible with what all they can do with their bodies — making distinct, highly evocative gestures, then changing to another gesture at immense speed, bending and contorting their bodies into impossible-looking shapes, throwing themselves to the floor, insanely fast high battemants, etc. etc. — and you can really see how much Gaga technique, taken over a period of time, can allow you to move. My problem was more with the overall piece. It didn’t seem to go anywhere, just seemed to be the same extremely intense movements — sometimes evoking horror, sometimes prayer for forgiveness or peace, sometimes shock, with brief moments of tenderness, attempts to connect to one another, thrown in.

Naharin made the soundscape himself (under the pseudonym Maxim Waratt), and it was very intense. At times a deep-voiced man would sing in Hebrew (I think), his guttural crooning creating at times a threatening, portending feel, at times a bluesy one, similar to Leonard Cohen. At other times, the sound would resemble an ambulance siren, an earthquake, a whistle, raindrops or a leak — some kind of falling water, sometimes a person breathing heavily, at times there would be utter silence.

Continue reading ‘BATSHEVA’S MAX’

(above photo of Proximal, photographer unknown, borrowed from here)

If you’re in New York and are looking for something inexpensive and worthwhile to do this weekend, I recommend GroundWorks Dance Theater, at the small, intimate West End Theater (a church) on the Upper West Side. This is a small company from Cleveland and it’s their New York debut. There are four good pieces, my favorite of which — Proximal, by K.T. Niehoff –  is shown above.

Proximal was really novel. It’s a duet for a man and woman and it’s fully choreographed of course, but the dancers (the excellent Amy Miller and Damien Highfield) seem to be making up the movement as they go along, hilariously getting themselves into these twisted, highly improbable positions with each other, which become more twisted and improbable as each suggests to the other what to do next. They even involve the audience a bit. It’s very clever and I will definitely seek out more from this choreographer.

The show is on through March 8th, every evening at 8:30 (except for the 8th, when it shows at 5:00). Go here for more details.

Katrina alerted me to this. Apparently, two Dancing With the Stars celebrity contestants have had to pull out of the show due to injury, and just the weekend before season eight is to premiere. It was first rumored that singer Jewel had to pull out due to tendinitis, but now, according to ABC’s press release, her injuries are much worse: fractured tibia in both legs. I know from covering the Sean Bell trial that fractured tibia are extremely serious. Two men who were in Sean Bell’s car during the shooting sustained fractured tibia from bullets and a doctor testified it would have been impossible for the one to walk or run on the injured leg and that he would be (and he most definitely was, judging by video footage) in howling pain. Both underwent surgery to have permanent metal rods implanted to hold the bones together. I guess the seriousness of a fractured tibia can vary — I mean obviously, but good lord, you’d think to sustain a fracture in each leg, she would have had to have fallen from an overhead lift or something. Anyway, no wonder she’s pulling out.

Continue reading ‘TWO DANCING WITH STARS CELEBS PULL OUT WEEKEND BEFORE SHOW’

(photo by Mr. Ng, from NYTimes)

I’ve got to go to small, experimental dance performances more often. It really is where much of the groundbreaking work happens these days.

I recently went to see Kisaeng becomes you at Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea, with Claudia La Rocco’s WNYC performance club. Kisaeng is a collaboration between experimental dance-maker Dean Moss and Korean choreographer Yoon Jin Kim and it explores, through movement, multimedia, and spoken word the lives of the kisaeng, women courtesans in Korea from the 10th Century on, who were, kind of like Japanese Geisha, well-trained in poetry and the arts and existing for the entertainment of Korean aristocracy.

What was really novel here, I felt, was the choreographers’ use of audience members. Apparently, they asked three women and one man in the lobby before the performance if they would participate in the production, without telling them what their roles would be. There are five professional female performers depicting the kisaeng (and, by the way, all were costumed in contemporary clothing — pants and t-shirts, etc.). The dance opens with one of them piercing her skin with a needle, and embroidering her palm with thread — very difficult to watch. This was live-videoed and projected onto a large screen at the back of the stage so you couldn’t help but watch. At the same time, another dancer takes center stage and opens her mouth, Scream-like, bending her neck far backward so she’s looking up toward the ceiling, like frantically crying out, or yearning for more. Several other dancers follow her, and soon all five are making that same, rather haunting movement.

Continue reading ‘KISAENG BECOMES YOU and $20 UP FRONT’

From April 16-19, the favorite will be performing with Maria Riccetto at the Danny Kaye Playhouse on the Upper East-Side. They, along with four other ABT dancers, will be dancing Francis Patrelle’s Come Rain/Come Shine, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Dances Patrelle.

Go here for more info. And don’t worry, I’ll be posting muchos reminders as the time approaches

Because I can’t resist, here’s Marcelo’s new headshot again in color:

Both photos copyright of Jade Young; courtesy of Jade Young and Scott Schlexer.