Author: Tonya

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Superstars of Dance is Completely Degrading to the Art Form

And you know I haven’t said that about any of the other dance shows. I’ve been very open-minded so far. But the judges tonight seem pretty open about rewarding ass-shaking over artistry, subtlety, dance skill, interpretive skill, ingeniousness of choreography, you name it. What is dance if it is not those things?

That Australian couple performed one of the worst Sambas I think I’ve ever seen. Maybe I’m still coming off of my Alvin Ailey high, or maybe it’s just this show and the horrifying camera work that is completely destroying practically everyone’s dancing, but what I saw from that Australian couple was all flash, no substance.

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New York City Ballet: Robbins, Chiaroscuro, and Sebastien Marcovici

 

Methinks with Seth and Nikolaj now gone, Sebastien Marcovici has kind of taken over as NYCB’s hunky male dancer. He shone in two of my favorite ballets from the past week anyway.

 

 

I went to City Ballet’s all Jerome Robbins program mid-week and today’s “Four Voices” — featuring ballets by four different choreographers (Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Peter Martins, Alexei Ratmansky, and Balanchine).

Both programs were excellent. My favorite ballet from today was Chiaroscuro by Taylor-Corbett, whom I’d never heard of before but whom I now won’t be forgetting.

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Recession Diversifies "The Ghetto"

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Not to sound melodramatic, but it just seems like the recession is really changing the way some people live. My apartment building seems like party central during weekday days now. Halls are filled with the cacophany of TV cartoons, soap operas, talk shows, and blaring stereos, all of which easily penetrate walls, floors, and ceilings. Either a lot of people are out of work or they work at home and enjoy lots of background noise. And people are up all night, blaring stereos, the same noise, till all hours of the morning. You ask someone politely to please turn it down a bit and they mumble and slam the door in your face. And the other day I smelled pot coming from someone’s apartment, again, during a weekday day. This used to be a professional building, with lawyers and journalists and the like as residents. Now everyone’s rude and antisocial. Maybe the middle-classes are starting to get a small sense of what those in poorer communities have had to deal with: hopelessness, frustration, anger, boredom…

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Blacks Acting "White" is Hilarious, But What Would the Reverse Be?

…and other questions I had after seeing Young Jean Lee‘s The Shipment, a very compelling off off-Broadway play about Black identity in America by a Korean-American playwright, starring an all-black cast.

 

Warning: if you’re in NY and you plan to see this, you may not want to read this yet!

I’d been really excited about seeing this play for a while and it definitely didn’t disappoint. Also made me think. A lot. And methinks this “review” may be all over the place because of those thoughts.

The play is divided into three sections, or acts. The first consists of a foul-mouthed Eddie Murphy-type stand-up comedian who says he’d love to spend all his time telling jokes about pooping (his very favorite subject of comedy) but is being forced to talk about race instead (because he’s black, because it unfortunately affects him as a black American). He remarks on some of the differences between whites and blacks: whites obsess about their weight throughout their lives, blacks — once they get married, forget about that shit. Occasionally, he’s confrontational but in a funny way, and, though I think he made many in the mostly white, mostly young, very liberal audience somewhat uncomfortable at points, everyone laughed. This was my least favorite section, mainly because I wish Lee would have been more specific at times and also because she overlooked class differences a bit. For example, the comedian says that whites love to accuse blacks of “whining,” but look at what whites whine about: “Ooh, I just don’t know what to dooo with my life!,” he says in falsetto, or “Ooh, am I too fat?!” It’s funny — because that’s exactly what a lot of whites do whine about — but upper-middle-class whites. Believe me, poor whites are not worried about how they look; they’re worried about putting food on the table, about how far they can stretch their next paycheck. Just visit any small working-class town in the south or the mid-west.

But also, I don’t really know what whites accuse blacks of whining about. Historical oppression? The disproportionate rates of incarceration? Racial targeting by the police? I’ve never heard any whites accuse blacks of whining about any of these things. Most whites don’t even want to think about those things.

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Champions of the Dance

 

I am really excited about this! It’s for one night only, Friday, January 23 at 8 pm, at Town Hall in midtown, and it’s starring a couple of my favorite pairs: Delyan Terziev and Boriana Deltcheva (in the above pic, far left) and Iveta Lukosiute and Gherman Mustuc (far right). Delyan & Boriana are a tall, thin, dramatic Latin couple I really like (she has these really gorgeous spidery limbs); they usually place in the finals in national competitions (and used to be competitive for top awards with Pasha and Anya when they were still competing). Iveta and Gherman are ten-dance champs (meaning, they compete in all ten dances, both Latin and Standard). They also do wonderful ballroom showcases.

Also performing are some dancers who were featured on the PBS show America’s Ballroom Challenge (which should be airing again soon, in early February): Evgeny Dyanchenko and Inna Ivanenko (above pic, in the middle), Tony Scheppler and Erin Bomboy, and Mayo Alanen and Lisa Vogel.

Tix are $45-$50. If you’re in New York, go here for more info. There isn’t a lot of Latin / Ballroom concert dance in New York so I’m very happy about this!

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Superstars of Dance, Semis Part I

I’m loving Maria Kochetkova! (She’s the ballerina dancing for Russia). I love how polished and perfect she was — all those turns! And her technique and precision were incredible. But I also love her personality — that she said she wanted to be on the program to show people who may not have seen ballet before what it’s like. I love how fascinated she is with everyone else’s dancing — like how she remarked that it was so wonderful to see so many forms of dance from around the world. Honestly, a lot of ballet dancers turn their noses up at other forms of dance, mainly because, having spent so much time in ballet school, they lack exposure to much else. So, it’s so reassuring to see a young ballerina who is not like that at all. And who’s a brilliant dancer!

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Is Slumdog Millionaire Really All That?

So, if you watched the Golden Globes last night, you know that the Danny Boyle movie Slumdog Millionaire took home just about all the top awards. Did you guys see it? I did, and I generally liked it, was on the edge of seat throughout (which doesn’t often happen at the movies for me), liked Boyle’s signature fast paced cinematography, the scenery of Mumbai, etc. But I also had some problems with the unreality of it all and am kind of dumbfounded that it got so much blind praise.

For one thing, I found the romance so over-the-top and unbelievable, it really kind of ruined the whole for me. We’re not really supposed to believe that he could have found his girl, and she’d still be there for him, after all those years, right? And if it is supposed to be a bit of magical realism, then I think it kind of undercuts the rest, which is supposed to be brutally realistic, right? Or is it? Do the police in Mumbai really torture a suspect like that, and over whether he cheated on a game show? I thought initially his torturers were mafia, but, according to the story, they were just plain old police, who became his friends later on. And there was so much suffering — the Christian mobs brutally murdering the Muslims, the gangs of organized kidnappers gouging out the eyes of the children before using them to make money, the selling into slavery. It was all so horrid. But then given the outrageous love-story plot and then

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Shorty Awards Finalists Are Up And Voting Begins Today

So Twitter’s Shorty Award finalist nominees are up. They deleted the Dance category, as I kind of expected they would, for, I assume, not enough nominations. Typical. Though they also deleted the Books category, so I’m not taking it personally 🙂 Anyway, if you want to check out the finalist Tweets and vote, go here.

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"Frame of View" at Cedar Lake Dance

Thursday night, Cedar Lake Dance had their winter season opening. As usual, they had a big celebration, serving free champagne and wine and inviting all the bloggers, critics, and choreographers. Philip, Taylor and I enjoyed standing around during intermission sipping champagne and people-watching; it was kind of a who’s who in the dance world, the most famous of the ‘who’s’ probably being Baryshnikov, who was looking rather tiny, but snazzy in a beret.

I went a little early to take in some of the Chelsea arts scene, which was extremely happening. Practically every gallery from 24th through 26th streets, 10th-11th Avenues, was having an opening. Roslyn Sulcas from the New York Times apparently had the same idea as me! Anyway, I had more than a few glasses of (free) wine by the time I got to Cedar Lake, mid-way down 26th Street…

They had three dances, two of which were premieres. One, memory/measure, was by Italian choreographer Luca Veggetti. The stage was minimalist, consisting only of a white mat. Two male and two female dancers took turns walking around its perimeter as the others danced duets in the middle. The soundtrack consisted of industrial sounds (a helicopter, clanking, etc.) and a voice-over telling a story. Unfortunately because I was so taken with the movement — complicated, emotionally intense partnering; stunning, difficult-looking deep plies on pointe by Acacia Schacte, I kept forgetting to listen to the words, so I didn’t get any “story.” One thing that struck me was how the dancers each moved so differently around the perimeter of the stage. One would kind of creep around cat-like, one would have more of a bravado to his strut, one kind of tiptoed. I’m not sure if it was intentional or simply different dancers having their own style.

 

My favorite piece of the night was Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman’s “frame of view.”

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Sweet Coppelia at New York City Ballet

 

New York City Ballet doesn’t often put on full-length story ballets, but when they do, they do very well with them. Coppelia was very entertaining. The leads were danced charmingly by Joaquin De Luz, probably the most actorly of the male dancers, and the doll-faced Megan Fairchild.

 

 

This is kind of a sad comedy that takes place in 19th Century Galicia. It’s the story of toymaker Dr. Coppelius (played by La Fosse, also in top pic) who creates a life-sized doll whom he rather sadly comes to love as his own daughter. Frantz (De Luz) is a country bumpkin in love with Swanilda (Fairchild) but also can’t help flirting madly with the doll (yeah, he is not too bright).

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Join Claudia's Performance Club!

If you’re in New York, please do join the performance club dance writer (and my friend) Claudia La Rocco has set up over at the WNYC blog!

I had to miss out on last month’s performances, but this month the group is seeing Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (which I went to last week and will post about very shortly) and Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment, a new dance by a Korean-American woman about black identity politics, which looks fascinating and which I can’t wait to see.

I think she has it set up so that you can either go to these performances with the group, or go see them at another time more convenient to you, and then everyone will discuss them online at the club’s WNYC forum.

In the meantime, or if you’re not in NY, watch the video and interview she posted. This is from Cedar Lake’s performance of the Didy Veldman dance that I’d gone on about earlier. I love the slow motion fight scene!

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Re-Post

I’m re-posting the post. I don’t know how to retrieve comments from Disqus so I’m re-posting the comments in the body of the post.

Parsons: An Evening of Classics, Some of Which I Love, Some of Which I Still Have Issues With

January 8, 2009

Tuesday evening I went to the opening night of Parsons Dance at the Joyce Chelsea. The season opened with Program B, all classics by founder David Parsons; later in the week the company will premiere Program A, a new rock opera.

I like this modern / contemporary company and always find them to be a lot of fun. They’re smallish but have a diverse repertoire (some dances are more lyrical and set to more classical music, others more jazzy and disco-y, set to light rock or soul music, some focused more on lighting effects), and a kind of cult following.

Actually, my favorite dance of the night was a short duet called Ebben, which is going to be part of the larger work premiering later in the week. It was just oozing with sexiness and passion, and I can’t wait to see the whole! Abby Silva, probably the most stand-out dancer in the troupe stood on high releve and kind of tip toed around Kevin Ferguson, standing with his back toward the audience, as if she was just kind of discovering him, then searching, maybe trying to understand him, to breathe in his essence.

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