Friday, May 3, 2024If New York City is considered "The Dance Capital of the World," than Utah is "The United State of Dance". For 50+ years it's been home to Ballet West, who made a very strong impression on their last Fall 2016 visit to the Joyce. December 2018 saw the premiere at New York Live Arts of Bears Ears, a thoughtful collaboration between NYC's ZviDance and Repertory Dance Theater of Utah. From February 19-23, New York Live Arts hosted sold-out performances by BalletNext, a dynamic chamber company comprised of University of Utah School of Dance students led by former ABT Principal Michelle Wiles.
Author: Patricia Contino
Samieva Theater’s ‘Medusa Volution’ at happylucky no.1
To borrow an Amazonian sales tactic, If you liked Madeline Miller's bestseller Circe, you should really catch the last four performances February 21-24 of Sophie Amieva and Suzanne Bagert's Medusa Volution at happylucky no.1. Just as Miller allows the nymph to describe in her own words her special skill set (turning men into pigs), the playwrights and their all-female Samvia Theatre group directed by Amiva create a strong collective voice untangling Greek/Roman mythology's if looks could kill eternal bad hair day. Taking their cue from a throwaway line Ovid's Metamorphosis, Medusa not always sprouted a head of snakes. The priestess's good looks attracted unwanted
Yaël Farber’s ‘Mies Julie’ at Classic Stage Company
Not that loyal Classic Stage Company attendees need convincing, but updates are one way of attracting an audience. Through March 10, CSC is running two new adaptations of August Strindberg classics. One is Yaël Farber's Mies Julie, a harrowing reinterpretation of the Swedish playwright's most famous work. The darkness within nineteenth century Expressionism invite exploration, and Faber, along with director Shariffa Ali smash every crevice of the contemporary South African farmhouse kitchen where the fatal encounter between Julie (Elise Kibler) and John (James Udom) takes place. Like Strindberg's 1888 original, the 75-minute play focuses on the class war between the bored rich young
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas ‘Verklärte Nacht’ at Baryshnikov Arts Center
About a year from now, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker will reach a mainstream audience when she stages the dances for Ivo van Hove's Broadway production of West Side Story. Both she and her company Rosas frequent BAM, various Lincoln Center festivals and Baryshnikov Arts Center, which over this long weekend presented the New York premiere of the Belgian modernist's stunning Verklärte Nacht in the Jerome Robbins Theater. There's no irony intended here. It's BAC's largest performing space and the two choreographers are generationally, aesthetically and fundamentally different from each other. Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), originally choreographed in 1995 and reconstructed in 2014, is based
Remote Theater Project debuts at LaMama with Amir Nizar Zuabi’s ‘Grey Rock’
The single set across LaMama's The Downstairs is the Wall. Not a mock-up of the geographically impossible one threatened for the U.S./Mexico borders, but the equally controversial Israel−Gaza security barrier. A lightning rod in U.S-Middle Eastern diplomacy, in Amir Nizar Zuabi's Grey Rock, it cannot block creativity or dignity. Zuabi, who also directed his play for the newly-formed Remote Theater, provides a blast-off point for The Occupation. Part of the wall opens revealing Yusuf (Khalifa Natou), a retired TV repairman and former political prisoner, studying blueprints in his shed. Without telling his daughter Lila (Fida Zaidan) or young friend Sheik (Motaz Malhis), Yusuf is
Dancing When Everyone’s Looking: Two Dance Celebrations
With Nutcrackers, Rockettes and Viennese waltzers, Thanksgiving to New Year's is the solitary time of the year when the general public shows an interest in dance. Before the holiday rush there were two dance celebrations - one marking an anniversary and the other a look into the beginnings of extraordinary career - with varying success. Balanchine: The City Center Years Starting on Halloween and ending on November 4, 2018, New York City Center jointly commemorated their 75th Anniversary and the prolific 15 years (1948-1963) George Balanchine and New York City Ballet were there. In 1943, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia created the New
ZviDance at New York Live Arts
ZviDance, under the direction of founder/Artistic Director Zvi Gotheiner, appeared December 19-22, 2018 at New York Live Arts. Their program included two provocative world premieres reflecting how effectively dance communicates the interior and exterior. The timing for presenting Bears Ears couldn't have been more ironic. The 1.35-million-acre Utah national park - sacred land to several Native American peoples - is threatened by the Trump administration twofold. As a slap to President Obama for officially declaring Bears Ears a national monument, the administration wants to reduce its size and drill it for oil. Then there's the partial government shutdown commencing during ZviDance's run
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center
In the Becoming Ailey video opening every performance this 60th Anniversary Season, Alvin Ailey is heard describing how he "always danced" during his childhood in Texas and young adulthood in Los Angeles. His passion led to the founding of an inclusive African-American modern dance company that is a cherished and integral part of American culture. Mr. Ailey died in 1989, but his legacy lives on due to the previous leadership of legendary dancer/Artistic Director Emerita Judith Jamison and current Artistic Director Robert Battle. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre comprises the main company, their home on West 55th Street that
‘The Making of King Kong’ at The Doxsee at Target Margin Theater
Lisa Clair’s The Making of King Kong, now playing at The Doxsee at Target Margin Theater thru December 15, is not a documentary about the 1933 horror/sfx classic or slick offsite pop-up for King Kong The Musical. For one thing, the only glimpses of the Brooklyn version of the "Eighth Wonder of the World!" who tore up Manhattan are of his giant (and very busy) paw and on video screens. The other is that none of the previous versions have a song remotely like "King Kong Plays Ping Pong With His Ding Dong". That alone is reason to revisit Skull Island
‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ at Classic Stage Company
What does cauliflower resemble? Fossilized flowers? Dead algae? Brain tissue? Perhaps Bertolt Brecht had these and others in mind creating a "Cauliflower War" as the cataclysmic event of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, his deliberately unfunny lampooning of Adolph Hitler. Brecht's protest play is now at the Classic Stage Company with a mesmerizing Raúl Esparza in the title role in John Doyle's uneven production. Brecht's inspiration for his 1941 play was Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Released one year before Arturo UI's premiere, Chaplin's intentionally funny film sends-up both Hitler and Mussolini. (Chaplin not only resembled Hitler, they were born days apart.) Unlike The