Letter from New York
2 February 2004.
Copyright © 2004 by
Mindy Aloff
published 26 January 2004
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The Show Goes On
Donizetti
Variations/Scotch Symphony/Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, NY
January 31, 2004
by
Mary Cargill
copyright 2004 by Mary Cargill
published 2 February 2004
It
seems as if the programs for this season’s Balanchine Festival should
come with a medical update. This week yet more injuries and illnesses
resulted in an unexpected guest, Caroline Cavallo, from the Royal Danish
Ballet, who danced the injured Jennie Somogyi’s Swan Lakes and
the flu-bound Miranda Weese’s Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No.
2 on very short notice. Cavallo had danced both roles (Peter Martins’
Swan Lake was made for the Danish company) and her invitation
was a more farsighted choice that the “shove an unprepared corps
girl on” scenario we too often see.
read review
Bare Bones Bournonville
The Principals and Soloists of the Royal Danish Ballet
Prudential Hall
New Jersey Performing Arts Center
Newark, New Jersey
January 29, 2004
by
Nancy Dalva
copyright
2004 by Nancy Dalva
published 2 February 2004
Denmark has
long been dispatching chamber troupes as dancing ambassadors. Peter Bo
Bendixen is the artistic director of the company that came to Newark.
For the most part, they presented excerpts from the full length ballets
of nineteenth century Danish master August Bournonville–pas de trois,
pas de deux, and divertissements—in no particular order, on a bare
stage, and without sets. Thus, the Bournonville is merely of academic
interest: what the steps are, how the dancers do them, and the like; or
merely of insider interest: how X looks substituting for Y, how B looks
compared to C, how D is being featured instead of E, and so forth.
read review
Dancers of Character
Bounty
Verses,
Rainbow Round My Shoulder,
and The Winter In Lisbon
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Presented by Washington Performing Arts Society
Opera House
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
January 27, 2004
by
Tehreema Mitha
copyright © 2004 by Tehreema Mitha
published 2 February 2004
The second program Alvin Ailey Dance Theater presented this week at The Kennedy Center was well chosen. It gave the audience works from three different choreographers that showcased the best of the Ailey dancers talents' while presenting three different moods and approaches.
Bounty
Verses was a Washington premiere, choreographed for The Ailey Company
by former AAADT member Dwight Rhoden. With thirteen dancers on stage the
energy was pulsating. While we are told that this dance “addresses
the non-stop pace and complexity of modern life,” no story line
was apparent, but certainly the way that the steps and movements are co-joined
is complexity in itself. The choreography was fast-paced, joints tightly
fitted into each other, the classical sometimes inseparable from the modern
movements, the extensions flowing into jazz hip movements. Likewise, the
music was a mosaic of classical pieces mixed with jazz and rock.
read review
reprinted from last week's midweek edition
Fabulous Dancers, Mediocre New Works
Night Creatures, Juba and
Heart Song
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Presented by Washington Performing Arts Society
Opera House
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C.
January 27, 2004
Clare
Croft
copyright © 2004 by Clare Croft
published 28 January 2004
Why can’t
anyone make a good piece on this company? In the last few years, only
Ron Brown has choreographed a work (Grace) equal to the Ailey
dancers’ abilities. The company’s opening night at the Kennedy
Center, which featured Washington premieres of Robert Battle’s Juba
and Alonzo King’s Heart Song both created in 2003, proved
that the trend of mediocre choreography for fabulous dancers continues.
read review
Big Time Dance Kicks In
Limón
Company
Cowell Theater
San Francisco Ballet Opening Gala
War Memorial Opera House
Dance Theatre of Harlem
U.C. Berkeley
San Francisco/Berkeley, California
January
2004
by
Paul Parish
Copyright ©2004 by Paul Parish
published 2 February 2004
After
a long hiatus, big-time dance kicked back in this week in the Bay Area.
Dance Theater of Harlem opened a week's worth of performances on the U.C.
campus in Berkeley;, San Francisco Ballet opened its winter season at
the Opera House with a gala that spilled over into City Hall across the
street; and the Limón Company danced nobly, to
a very appreciative audience, in a one-night stand at the Cowell Theater,
and set a standard of dance intelligence nobody else met all week.
Nothing else
all week, except Concerto Barocco (of which more below) matched
the dignity, passion, formal beauty, and rhythmic acuity of Limón
's The Unsung, which I had never seen before and found completely
thrilling. The ballet is a paean in honor of the great warrior chiefs
Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Metacomet, Tecumseh, Red Eagle, Black Hawk, Osceola,
and Pontiac, danced in silence by six men who have each a variation interrupted
by appearances of the corps, (I recognized many of the shapes Michael
Smuin used in his Song for Dead Warriors, which of course he
must have taken from Limón).
read review
A Very Personal Vision
BUGLISI/FOREMAN
DANCE
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
January 27 & January 31
by
Susan Reiter
copyright
© 2004 by Susan Reiter
One
enters a very specific world when viewing the choreography of Jacqulyn
Buglisi and Donlin Foreman, who as artistic directors contribute equally
to the repertory of the ten-year-old Buglisi/Foreman Dance. It is a world
that is passionately committed to the full-bodied, emotionally propelled
technique and esthetic of Martha Graham, in whose company both were principal
dancers for many years. It is marked by what could be considered "old-fashioned"
values within today's dance scene—frequent use of nineteenth-century
music (often performed live), dances inspired by literary sources and
humanistic concerns. This kind of open-hearted, deeply expressive work
is certainly not trendy, but the company happily and proudly inhabits
its own realm, set apart from whatever constitutes the cutting-edge of
the moment.
read review
Dresden Modern
Palucca
School Dresden
Bancroft Studio
UC Berkeley
January 28, 2004
by
Rita Felciano
Copyright ©2004 by Rita Felciano
On a Bay Area stop over during their California tour, the eight members of the graduating class of the seventy-eight year old Palucca School of Dresden brought a program that both intrigued and disappointed.
Gret Palucca (1902-1993), an early student of Mary Wigman’s, was known for a light and mirthful performing style and for being a strong proponent of dance as pure movement. She was a strong technician—her jumps were legendary--and also a survivor. Her school made it through the Nazi and the Soviet eras.
These dancers
were excellently trained; their fluidity and sense of physical abandon
belying the rigorous training that makes possible the appearance of natural
ease. Large scale, with clean attacks and an appetite for space, they
also danced delicately and communicated a nuanced expressiveness whether
in a comic, dramatic or lyrical mode.
read review
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