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writers on dancing

How refreshing to encounter, amid the flurry of NYCB premieres, a bold, confident new ballet that stakes out its own territory and does not remind one of anything else. From its first moments, Alexei Ratmansky’s “Russian Seasons,” a 35-minute work in twelve sections, seizes the eye and keeps one off guard with its unpredictable groupings, and from start to finish Ratmansky displays the courage of his convictions. READ MORE

In spite of a season celebrating Frederick Ashton’s centenary, with great benefits to audiences and dancers, there are still quite a few of his ballets we haven’t seen lately, and among them until this past week was “Homage to the Queen”, his creation to mark Elizabeth’s coronation, premiered on the actual day, 2 June 1953. (Let me remind you that New York City Ballet gave a special programme at City Centre the same night: Ashton’s two NYCB creations, “Picnic at Tintagel” and “Illuminations”, plus the premiere of Jerome Robbins’s “Fanfare” to Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Purcell — two British composers for the price of one.) READ MORE

San Francisco Letter No. 10
Mark Foehringer, Leyya Tawil’s Dance Elixir, San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival
by Rita Felciano

Last year, Mark Foehringer created an ambitious, multi-movement story ballet, “Diadorim”, based on Brazilian novelist Joao Guimaraes Rosa’s expansive “Grande Sertao; Veredeas” (danceview times,  volume 3, number 25,  June 27, 2005). This year Foehringer changed directions 180 degrees. He choreographed the fifty-minute “Duettos” as a series of variations for two of his company members, Katherine Wells, who also dances with Robert Moses’ Kin, and Brian Fisher, recently retired from ODC/SF. READ MORE