Latest News

Posted on

BATSHEVA’S MAX

 

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”

Posted on

GROUNDWORKS DANCE THEATER

 

 

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.

Posted on

TWO DANCING WITH STARS CELEBS PULL OUT WEEKEND BEFORE SHOW

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”

Posted on

KISAENG BECOMES YOU and $20 UP FRONT

 

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”

Posted on

New York City Ballet Season Finale and Wrap Up With Response to Sir A

 

 

So, Sunday marked the end of New York  City Ballet’s winter season. I was honestly in a blue funk all day yesterday, which shows, I guess, that I am really beginning to love this company since I’ve normally only gotten so sad over ABT and Alvin Ailey.

Sunday was a one-day only program, the All-American Season Finale, which included Robbins’s Glass Pieces, Martins’s Hallelujah Junction, and Balanchine’s Tarantella and Stars and Stripes. Tarantella (this is the only time it showed this season) is always fun, with its cute Neapolitan peasant boy-tries-to-get-girl caricatures, lightening-charged footwork, and series of bravura solos for both man and woman, all performed with a tambourine. I was completely out of breath after watching Joaquin de Luz fly across the stage and ultimately steal a kiss from Megan Fairchild. Joaquin is not just a dancing virtuoso but a dramatist as well and his characters are always these virile, sexed-up, but charming, innocuous men. I really love him.

Glass Pieces and Hallelujah Junction also really grew on me. I don’t know if it was Maria Kowroski or what, but the  slower, more adagio section of Glass Pieces was very compelling this time, and it really spiced up the last man-centric, drum-beating, section as well. At first I wasn’t a huge fan of Maria Kowroski, but either she has improved or she has really grown on me. I always thought she had an excellent dancer body, but now she is using it in a much more expressive way, really to say something. The only thing I’m not in love with choreography-wise in Glass Pieces is in the last section, how the men come jogging out, hands powerfully punching the air, doing their ‘man things’ to the booming drums, and then the women daintily slink in to the sound of the flutes. Corny.

I was able to watch more than just the mesmerizing lighting in Hallelujah Junction this time. I love the movement theme –toward the beginning — of the landing a jump or phrase on releve and then swiftly lowering the ankle to the floor. On Andrew Veyette it looked kind of teasing but in a sinister way, like the slicing of a knife. There is something very sinister in general about Andrew Veyette, very virile in a threatening way, which makes him perfect for the devious man dressed in black here.

And I love how Sebastien Marcovici, the man in white, kind of Janie Taylor’s saviour, would powerfully jete across stage after him, threatening him, banishing him. Sebastien and Janie are such the romantic couple, in part because they work so well together and in part because of their respective sizes. Someone very knowledgeable in the dance world told me they thought he’d been working out a lot, trying to build muscle. I do think he seems to have become more muscular lately, especially his legs. Building muscle often decreases the muscle’s flexibility and he doesn’t seem to make a perfect split on a jete like some of the others, but I still think it’s so romantic that he’s so much larger than little Janie; he can just sweep her off the floor and scoop her up into his arms — aw 🙂

The program notes state that Stars and Stripes, the somewhat cheesily patriotic but excellently danced Balanchine ballet, was shown at presidential tributes, like that of Kennedy and Johnson, and at Nelson Rockefeller’s NY gubernatorial inauguration. It’s so weird to me to think of that, though I could see it performed back then. But now? At President Obama’s inauguration? It just doesn’t seem like it would fit. It would seem kind of anachronistic, sadly…

Anyway, the talk of the ballet world lately has been Sir Alastair’s New York Times season wrap-up.

Taylor Gordon, my friend and fellow blogger / dance writer, says, “whether you agree with him or not, it boggles me that one person has the power to say these things in basically the one print medium dance criticism has left. Ouch.”

Macaulay basically takes the women of NYCB to task, saying none of them really command authority like true ballerinas,

Continue reading “New York City Ballet Season Finale and Wrap Up With Response to Sir A”

Posted on

New Cafe at Alice Tully Hall

P2281944

Yesterday, Ariel invited me to a rehearsal at New York City Ballet. I love watching rehearsals! Especially with performers you really like; you kind of get to know their personalities a bit more. I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about anything in detail, but can I just say, methinks Tyler Angle must be every girl’s Dream partner 😀

 

Anyway, afterward, Ariel told me about the new cafe at Alice Tully Hall, the northernmost building of Lincoln Center, that houses mainly music concerts. She’d heard the restaurant portion (apparently the mac ‘n cheese) got some negative reviews, but I thought their coffee was rich and the American cheesecake we had, which was creamy and topped with little swirls of white chocolate, was delic. The spacious cafe is on the bottom floor and, encased in glass, it lets a lot of sunlight in and gives you an excellent view of the surrounding area.

P2271940

(this is facing east).

P2271936

(and this south, toward the rest of Lincoln Center. Ariel picking delicately at her cheesecake in foreground 🙂 )

P2281946

(the renovated Juilliard School aka Irene Diamond Building atop Alice Tully Hall).

Lincoln Center’s been under construction forever, so it’s nice to finally see some of the building facades begin to crawl out from under their shells.

Also, last night I went to a very intriguing performance at Dance Theater Workshop, called Kisaeng becomes you by experimental dance-makers Dean Moss and Yoon Jin Kim. It’s on for one night more — tonight — and I highly recommend it if you’re in New York. I went to see it as part of Claudia La Rocco’s WNYC performance club. I found it to be powerful but subtle, and at least in part about the commodification of Asian women in contemporary society, although club members, who discussed the performance a bit afterward at a nearby French restaurant, saw different things. Review coming soon! In the meantime, here’s Gia Kourlas’s NYTimes write-up.

Posted on

America’s Ballroom Challenge

 

 

So, what did you guys think about the show?

I was worried I’d be mad about the new format but I really ended up thinking this one worked better, at least for TV, even if it is fake. For people who’ve never been to a regular ballroom dance competition before, the competition is really the first parts, the group dances (as shown in the picture above) — that they severly truncated here, showing only a small part of one dance for each of the four categories. But I do think the showdances work so much better for TV. On TV the excitement of the group dances is really lost. But it’s so stunning to see, to feel, all these couples whizzing by you, spinning, shaking their hips at lightening speed, to hear the crowds cheer, scream really, while all the couples try to look so glamorous and graceful, the raucous audience making it seem more like a boxing match. I encourage everyone who hasn’t been to go to a real competition.

Anyway, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Riccardo Cocchi and Yulia Zagoruychenko won — they’re second in the world in Latin, and I’m wondering, after watching them in November (which is when this show was taped), if they could overtake the current champs, Poland’s Michael Malitowski and Joanna Leunis, at some point. I loved their Cha Cha tonight (with her in the sizzling red and him in the open tux jacket), their Samba, and their combo routine to the pure percussion (which I love — I love that they’re not afraid to use that kind of music). I love how they vary the rhythms in an often unpredictable way, I love his speed and how she makes original shapes with her body, especially when she tucks in her stomach, rolls her shoulders, and curls her pelvis, looking almost like a cobra. Or is it a python? The snake that lifts its front part and expands its head, ghost-like, before attacking?… (I don’t really want to do a google image search) Anyway, I really really love them– Yulia and Riccardo.

Since the two top Standard couples — Arunas Bizokas and Katusha Demidova and Victor Fung and Anna Mikhed — were at another competition (I think in the U.K.) at the same time as the Ohio Star Ball and didn’t compete, it was really a toss up who would win. I thought Linas Koreiva and Liene Apale would win — I thought they danced the best — though I loved the balletic look to Mikhail Avdeev and Anastasia’s beautiful waltz. I love how in all their routines

— oooh, Oscar Hijuelos (one of my favorite writers, author of Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love) is on Larry King, PBS! He is WAY the hell younger than I thought… —

sorry,  just had to say that. 🙂 Anyway, I love how Mikhail and Anastasia’s dances were all basic, yet so well done, so beautifully executed. Shows how dance is more about excellent technique and lush, expansive movement than tricks. And I love that they used classical music instead of going for the modern and poppy.

Totally predictable of course that Joanna Zacharewicz and Jose DeCamps would win Rhythm — and how much do I love that there are Joses in the world — how hot was that mambo! And that John Travolta! He is truly one of the most charismatic dancers in all of ballroom.

And Jonathan Roberts and Valentina were lovely. I do believe she is the powerhouse of that partnership. She really shines and her form is so splendid. His is less so (and I caught him pigeon-toed a few times), though he is a solid support for her, which is mainly what the man is supposed to be. I liked J.T. Thomas and Tomasz Mielnicki’s snazzy Foxtrot, though I’ve seen both couples in competition before and can see how Jonathan and Valentina took the whole without winning the showdance portion.

Oh, before I forget, what did you guys think of that Swan Lake dance at the beginning of the program, by Mikhail Zharinov and Galina Detkina in the American Smooth division? It was one of the very first ones, if you can remember. If you didn’t notice — and the announcers didn’t point it out — she was wearing a long white glove on her right arm, with a swan’s face and beak painted on the thumb and fingers. So, the way she was holding that arm up and bending her wrist like she did, when you see it up close (as I did at Champions of the Dance recently here in NY at Town Hall), her whole body really does look like a swan, with her hand the head, her arm the neck, and her skirt — when pulled out and held to the back (either by him or by her) — the body. I couldn’t figure out how I felt about it when I saw it live — whether I thought it was cheesy or pretty, and, after seeing it from further afar, on TV, I choose the latter.

Other things: I love my Vaidotas Skimelis 🙂 Dressed as Mozart! Or was it Louis the XVI and Jurga Pupelyte Marie Antoinette? What a big fun charming goof. But an excellent dancer. Their dance was rather humorous but they still had very nice form and some creative choreography and he had some jumps and stylized runs that showed he really could be a balletic, graceful dancer, large as he is.

And why do I have no problem envisioning Boriana Deltcheva as a cat! She’s so feline already; I love the way she climbed on Delyan’s back and wrapped her legs around his waist. She’s such a tall, thin thing, she looked just like a sleek black catwoman. She has the ideal body. She put a note up on Facebook a while ago advertising that she was selling some of her costumes and I had to laugh — like everyone the planet over wishes they could fit into them 🙂

Another highlight: Gherman Mustuc and Iveta Lukosiute’s Carmen tango in the Standard. They always come up with such creative showdance ideas. Such great music, and her red dress was gorgeous.

Pavlo Barsuk and Anna Trebunskaya: how insanely intense was that Paso! I love intense Pasos! And he is the ultimate in the intensity department, believe me – -if you even see him dance live, he does this thing where his eyes grow really wide; he looks like he could devour you for lunch — or his competition anyway. Such a funny contrast to her sweet face and toothy chipmunk smile.

And of course Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova — sorry, I’m really into the Latins, obviously. They recently danced at the Dance Times Square showcase and I totally fell for them. He is so damn fast and slick and precise. And they ended one of their dances at the DTS show with that ending trick they did tonight in the Cha Cha, if you remember it — where he flips and drops her, catching her right before she’s about to hit the floor, face down. DTS audience went WILD.

Anyway, enough from me. What did you guys think?

Posted on

Marie Antoinette Ballet About to Premiere in Houston

 

Apparently the artistic director of the Houston Ballet, Stanton Welch, whose work — that I’ve seen anyway– I’ve really liked, has made a new ballet based on the life of Marie Antoinette, which is just about to premiere. See a video of the company’s rehearsal footage here, and some photos of the making of face casts to be used during the execution scene here. And follow progress on the ballet on the company’s blog.

I’d so love to see this, though I can’t really go to Houston right now. I hope they take it on tour. If anyone is local (DA perhaps?), please do report!

 

Posted on

DAVIDSBUNDLERTANZE!

 

Say that five times in a row 🙂 (

Last Wednesday, my friend Judy and I went to NYCB for their Founding Choreographers II program, which included two by Balanchine — Ballo della Regina, and Robert Schumann’s Davidsbundlertanze (it’ll be a miracle if I don’t misspell it at some point), and Jerome Robbins’s Glass Pieces.

My favorite was the middle one (whose name translates to “Dances of the League of David” — Schumann’s imaginary society of artists organized to combat Philistinism), and it’s becoming one of my favorites of Balanchine’s in general, though many people can’t stand it and think it moves way too slowly. Made in 1980 and one of Balanchine’s last works, it’s meant to depict the mid-19th Century composer Schumann’s relationship with his wife, a pianist named Clara Wieck, and his ensuing mental breakdown, which led to a suicide attempt, followed by institutionalization.

There are four couples who seem to me to depict various stages of the same relationship — one is older and more mature, another is young, hot-headed and full of passion, another frolicking and playful, and the last and most pathos-ridden somewhere in between, full of loving and longing but pockmarked with fateful misunderstandings and missed connections, generally standing I think for the tragic impossibility of true human connection.

Continue reading “DAVIDSBUNDLERTANZE!”

Posted on

READ RUSSIA Launch Party at IDLEWILD BOOKS

P2191925

Last night Ariel and I went to a launch party for the new online version of Read Russia, a magazine about all things Russian, at Idlewild Books in Union Square. I’d heard about the event through Lauren Cerand’s happening Monday column, The Smart Set, on Maud Newton’s literary blog.

I hadn’t heard of the magazine before, but it looks like a fun, informative read, and just the kind of publication I’d be into, nostalgic Russophile that I am. I say nostalgic because it seems kind of like a zine for Russian expats living here — as well as Americans– but kind of the reverse of the Prague Post and St. Petersburg Times, and all those literary mags founded by members of my generation for Americans living in Eastern Europe in the 90s, right after the fall of Communism. Oh, to be young in the fin de siecle again :S…

And totally fell in love with Idlewild Books. Honestly, best bookstore I think I’ve seen. At least it suits me to a t. They specialize in foreign and “travel books” but I put the latter in quotes because they’re not only the kind of cheesy travel books you’re used to that really might better be called tourist books, but novels, historical accounts, and the like, written by that region’s writers, or insightful visitors, that give you a much richer, deeper sense of the place.

P2191926

P2191922

And, unbelievably, they had this back table of heavily discounted books, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen at a small, independent bookstore before! Books I can actually afford 🙂 I had an armful ready to buy but the cash register was long closed by the time Ariel and I ended our vodka fest (okay, my vodka fest) and got ready to leave.

Yes, they had free flavored vodka, which of course I had to have. Right when I got there, a man had just emptied into his cup the remaining bottle on the table, so a Read Russia editor brought out a new one. But she didn’t open it, and I couldn’t figure out the blasted cap to save my life. A guy must have seen me picking desperately at the thing, then giving up, and embarrased, placing it back down on the table and trying to walk away nonchalantly. He came up, unscrewed it, and without pouring himself a glass, sat the bottle right back down before where I’d been standing and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. How embarrasing.

They also had these delicious Russian candies, but the blasted things were downright elephantine. I unwrapped a cherry-wrapped log thinking it was going to be all squishy and gummy-bear-like so I could tear it apart with my teeth, but no, it was hard candy. I couldn’t bite it apart, so had to put the whole thing in my mouth. It was like the size of a small hot dog — like the kind you use for pigs in blankets! I couldn’t talk without my mouth drooling red syrup, and I kept feeling like I was going to choke, so I nonchalantly wrapped it in a napkin and placed it in an empty, used vodka cup. Apparently it takes practice to be Russian.

P2201931

At the end of the evening, they gave us each as parting gifts a “Literary Map of St. Petersburg.” I was so excited — just my kind of thing! I have one of London as well. And even more exciting when Ariel discovered that there were series numbers listed on the bottom right corners. Mine was 25/100 and hers 24/100. Real, original prints! Oh how I love free art!

P2201934

How does it look on my wall?

Update: for more info on this lovely little gem, go here.