Larry Keigwin, one of my favorite choreographers, will stage a show for fashion week, which is held this year at Lincoln Center. It’s called Fashion’s Night Out: The Show, and will be held at Lincoln Center on September 7th. Click below to read the whole press release.
Continue reading “Larry Keigwin Will Stage Fashion’s Night Out, for Fashion Week, on Sept 7”
How awesome is this!: “Tonya Plank’s SWALLOW is a real page turner, & she shows that lawyers get as intensely nervous as dancers.” From Wendy Perron, E-I-C of Dance Magazine, via Twitter. I’m so giddy 🙂 I’d run into Ms. Perron at an Alvin Ailey season preview Tuesday night and when she told me she was reading my book and enjoying learning about my other life, I almost fell off my chair! I can’t even express how honored I am that she even decided to pick the book up!
The Alvin Ailey season preview was excellent, by the way. Their NY City Center season doesn’t begin until December but I think it’s going to be really fantastic. We got to see a sneak preview of The Hunt, by Robert Battle (incoming Artistic Director), which is an African dance depicting how men prepare for an actual hunt but that also serves as a metaphor for how dancers train and prepare to execute a difficult dance. I can’t wait to see that one in full, as well as The Prodigal Prince, by Geoffrey Holder. That one originally premiered in 1968 and Holder was there to talk a bit about it. Really sweetly funny man! It’s about the Haitian artist, Hector Hyppolite, known as “the Haitian Picasso,” and it’s a narrative filled with lots of beautiful African dance. We also saw Camille A. Brown’s Evolution of a Secured Feminine, which I remember from a Fall For Dance program a couple of years ago. It’s a one-woman solo that I liked very much and will, for the first time this season, be performed by someone other than Brown herself.
I enjoyed seeing all my favorite Ailey dancers again – and on a small stage this time (it took place in the Citicorp theater in the basement of their studios instead of City Center), and I was particularly happy to see Briana Reed again. She is one of my favorite women in the company – strong and very dramatic and an intense mover – and I missed seeing her last season. I think she was out with an injury for most of it.
Also, Judith Jamison revealed that Ailey will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Revelations this season, which means the cast for some performances will be increased to 50 dancers! They’re also making a film about that dance, which will be shown at all of the performances, and there will be a lot of live music, some of which Jamison will herself be conducting. Sweet Honey and the Rock will also perform live. And, there will be nice tributes to Denise Jefferson, Joan Weill, and to Jamison, who will be serving her last season as Artistic Director.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking of moving out of New York for a while, but I’m now thinking I’m going to wait on that for at least a few months. There are too many exciting things happening this fall – from Ailey’s season, to New York City Ballet’s first ever fall season, to ABT’s first Nutcracker, to of course the regulars like Fall for Dance and the Guggenheim Works & Process series. I think I need to wait a bit. Plus, I’ve made so many wonderful friends here, and I’m so involved in the dance scene, and every time I think of leaving NYC it really saddens me. But of course with the internet, friendships can easily survive physical distance these days. And I’m sure there are dance scenes everywhere, maybe just not of the same intensity. Who knows, maybe I just need a top-floor apartment somewhere else in the city… Upstairs Godzilla has moved out but her furniture-throwing legacy — an extremely creaky ceiling that sounds like it’s going to fall every time the new upstairs neighbor so much as shifts his weight (and which the landlord won’t fix) — remains…
Oh, one more thing (I know this post is very rambling): Ms. Perron mentioned to me that she saw a preview of Mao’s Last Dancer, which she thought was very good, and that it opens this weekend. So, I know one thing I’ll be doing this weekend. So excited for good ballet movies!
From August 9th through 14th, Gallim Dance (photographed above), which I highly recommend, will be performing at the Joyce Theater. I recently saw them rehearse the program they’ll be performing, Wonderland, and I loved it. Young artistic director and choreographer Andrea Miller has studied dance in Israel with Ohad Naharin and has danced with his excellent company, Batsheva, and it shows. This is the kind of modern dance I most love: high energy, full of meaning, thought-provoking, and that really has something to say.
Gallim will be sharing that bill with Camille A. Brown, who’s choreographed for Alvin Ailey and Urban Bush Women and whose work I really like.
Alternating nights with them are two other female choreographers and their companies – Monica Bill Barnes and Kate Weare. I’ve found their work by turns clever, funny, and provocative, and I recommend them as well.
The Gallim / Brown bill is August 9, 11, 13, and 14th, and the Barnes / Weare is August 10, 12, and 14th. Go here for more info.
The Fall For Dance 2010 schedule has been announced. It begins on September 28th and runs through October 9. Again, tickets are a mere $10 and they go on sale on City Center’s website on September 12 at 11 a.m. – and you know that means 11 a.m. sharp! Highlights are ABT (performing the gorgeous Thais Pas de Deux again!), Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Corella Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Gallim Dance, San Francisco Ballet, Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, Bill T. Jones, there’s a Brazilian troupe making its festival debut, and much more. Click on the link below to see the whole schedule.
My friend Alyssa is an independent arts curator and she has a show this Friday and Saturday night in Williamsburg that may be of interest to my NY-based dance peeps.
It’s a collaboration between artist Sarah Olson and choreographer Cori Kresge (who is a member of the Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group and of the Merce Cunningham teaching faculty) called “Galvanic Folklore From the Accelerating Universe: an Evening of Dance and Music Inspired by Scientific Theories and Evolutionary Fantasies.” There will be a reception each evening preceding both of the 8:00 performances and Olson’s art exhibition, “A Two Night Stand: the Birds and the Trees,” which is a response to the choreography, will be on display.
Go here for more details.
I’ve just received word that Alvin Ailey dancers Jamar Roberts and Rachael McLaren (photos above by Andrew Eccles) will be appearing on this Thursday’s results show of So You Think You Can Dance. They’ll be performing an excerpt from Ulysses Dove’s Bad Blood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that dance but have always found Dove’s work very captivating. Plus, Jamar’s one of my favorites. Exciting!
Also, for New York audiences, Alvin Ailey will be performing in Central Park’s free SummerStage series on July 23rd and 24th, both nights at 8pm. By the way, this year marks the 25th anniversary of SummerStage.
Also for NYers, the Ailey Extension is offering a buy five get one free deal on classes through the end of July in celebration of the school’s 5th anniversary. Go here for more info.
So, this is the last week of ABT’s Met season, and they are closing out with my favorite, Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet. My recommended casts are both performances on Saturday – Natalia Osipova is debuting as Juliet in the matinee, dancing opposite David Hallberg, and that evening is the lovely Diana Vishneva (who has really been blowing me away this season), with Marcelo Gomes as her Romeo. (Angel Corella was originally scheduled to be Vishneva’s Romeo but he is injured). Also, the Wednesday afternoon cast is good — Hee Seo, who is one of my current favorite Juliets, dances with Corey Stearns. Tonight is your only chance to see Herman Cornejo as Mercutio — he’s my favorite for that part. The leads are Marcelo and Juliet Kent. Go here for the full schedule.
Here is a recently-added YouTube of various clips of La Scala’s production of the same ballet, starring Corella and Alessandra Ferri (my favorite ballerina ever in that role).
Photo at top of David Hallberg as Romeo and Herman Cornejo as Mercutio, by Fabrizio Ferri.
Tonight I was invited by the Guggenheim Works & Process peeps to a Morphoses rehearsal. Funny, I kept expecting Christopher Wheeldon to be there… but of course he wasn’t. This was really special because it was a first rehearsal; the dancers were just meeting the two choreographers whose work they’ll be performing in September in Martha’s Vineyard, and in October here in NY. I’ve never been to a rehearsal that early before – usually the choreographers don’t want an audience until the work is complete or nearly complete.
The two choreographers were Jessica Lang and Pontus Lidberg. They’ve each been commissioned to set a dance to the same David Lang score. Always fun to see what different artists come up with to the same piece of music. This was very lyrical music, part of it choral, and they had the same five dancers to work with – three women, two men.
First we saw Jessica Lang, and her choreography was very lyrical, very classically balletic, very pretty.
Continue reading “MORPHOSES REHEARSAL – JESSICA LANG MAKES ME WANT TO DANCE AGAIN…”
Tonight, DeMa Dance Company performs at the Alvin Ailey theater. This is the company I’d blogged about earlier, when I attended their rehearsals and interviewed Sonya Tayeh and Billy Bell. They’ll be performing Tayeh’s piece, When the Love Enters, the Light Shines, and Bell will be dancing. Act fast if you want to go: they’re only on tonight (at 7, gala reception follows the performance) and tomorrow at 8! For tickets and more info, go here.
Still hoping Bell will be on So You Think You Can Dance this season. I’d thought he was a sure thing, but now that they’ve changed the format to include only 10 finalists instead of 20 I’m a bit worried…
Above rehearsal photo courtesy of DeMa Dance Company.
Ballet season is almost here in NYC! New York City Ballet opens April 29th with a program that includes two premieres — one by Benjamin Millepied and one by Alexei Ratmansky (now ABT’s resident choreographer). The Millepied ballet, set to music by Thierry Escaich, will star several SLSG favorites: Janie Taylor, Sara Mearns, Sean Suozzi and Amar Ramasar.
The Ratmansky, set to a score by Eduoard Lalo, will be danced by Wendy Whelan, Jenifer Ringer, Sara Mearns, Robert Fairchild, Megan Fairchild, Abi Stafford, and Daniel Ulbricht.
The two world premieres will launch this season’s Architecture of Dance – New Choreography and Music Festival, devoted to new work. Acclaimed architect Santiago Calatrava has created scenic designs for five of the season’s premieres, including opening night’s Millepied piece.
Go here for tickets and details.
Above drawing by Santiago Calatrava.
ABT, currently on tour in Chicago, opens its classical season at the Met, in honor of its 70th anniversary this year, later, in May.
ABT, NYCB, Yankees — CLEARLY the best time of the year 😀
Isn’t this a gorgeous rehearsal photo of Marcelo Gomes and Sara Mearns, taken by the excellent Matthew Murphy! They are rehearsing for an upcoming performance of Avi Scher & Dancers, which you must go see if you’re in NY. I don’t know how ticket availability now stands, but this is an excellent opportunity to see some of the world’s greatest dancers up close in the small, intimate Citicorp theater in the Alvin Ailey studios. The show will star these two above as well as Veronika Part (below), and, amongst many others, Abi Stafford, Christian Tworzyanski and Savannah Lowery from NYCB, and Eric Tamm and Arron Scott of ABT. Readers of this blog already know how very much I love Marcelo and Veronika, and how I’ve been going on and on and on about Sara Mearns since last NYCB season. I have long been wanting to see Mearns partner with an ABT dancer — and no one more perfect than Marcelo! So, obviously, I can’t recommend this show enough. It’s this weekend, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
(Veronika Part, by Matthew Murphy)
Here are the rest of Matt Murphy’s gorgeous rehearsal photos. And see Oberon’s Grove for photos by Kokyat of Veronika rehearsing with Arron Scott.
Visit the Avi Scher Facebook page for more photos and videos, and for more info on the show. For tickets, go here.
They’re included with the special $22 prix fixe dinner tonight at Good Enough to Eat, a wonderful UWS eatery. Yum! Unfortunately, don’t know if I’ll be able to make it; I’ll be at City Center for Corella Ballet’s United States debut!
Also currently showing in NY is Keigwin + Company at the Joyce Theater in Chelsea. It’s their first full season on that stage. They’re one of my favorite modern dance companies and if you’re in NY I highly recommend them. Here’s a promo video:
And here’s an early review from Oberon.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!