New York City Ballet's Spring Season
"Romeo + Juliet"
May 1, 2007
reviewed by Gay Morris
May 2, 2007
reviewed by Susan Reiter
May 3, 2007
reviewed by Mary Cargill
Letter from London
by John Percival
How much more dance, I wonder, can London take? Since Sadler's Wells Theatre reopened after being rebuilt, it has devoted most of its performing time to dance, and in addition has another more centrally placed theatre, the Peacock, again mostly for dance shows but aimed at a less specialised audience. At Covent Garden, the Royal Opera is allowed more performances than the Royal Ballet but the theatre compensates by letting itself out to impresarios who bring ballet companies from abroad — the Moscow Bolshoi last summer, La Scala Milan this summer. The South Bank Centre shows quite a bit of dance, so does the Barbican Centre, and The Place continues its customary seasons of small-scale dance. READ MORE
Alonzo King's Line's Ballet
by Leigh Witchel
Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet is, ironically enough, one of the most resolutely non-linear companies around. Not the lack of physical lines; the dancers all have long, elegant proportions. There are few lines in King’s concept of time; beginnings and ends seem attached as if mere concessions to the audience. His dances are long, episodic washes of middle; hazy dreams and violent reveries. READ MORE
Washington Ballet's 7 x 7: Shakespeare
by Lisa Traiger
Washington, D.C. has been awash in Shakespeare — his artful comedies, his mesmerizing tragedies, his commanding histories — have captured legions of resident theater goers with multiple productions of “Hamlet,” “Romeo and Juliet” and some less regularly staged versions of plays like “Coriolanus.” The city has been a stage for the region-wide, six-month-long Shakespeare in Washington multi-arts festival, a boon for bard lovers and those who haven’t heard a rhymed couplet since high school English let out. In the Washington’s Ballet’s end-of-season programming, “7x7: Shakespeare,” the company asserts its own physical approach to the rarely-musty dramatics that have kept Shakespeare relevant across the centuries and continents. READ MORE
Susan Shields' Ballet Cocktail
by Alexandra Tomalonis
George Mason University has an excellent dance series. This season, it included performances by Mark Morris Dance Group, Moscow Festival Ballet, Momix, Shen Wei Dance Arts, several folk and international ensembles, and D.C.–based choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess. The Center for the Arts offers free parking, good sight lines, and reasonable prices (tickets for Susan Shields’ show ranged from $22 to $44, and the 12–event series starts at $195 and tops at $390). Every time I’ve attended a dance event at GMU, the house is full or nearly full; the Center is Exhibit A in the case that there IS an appetite for dance today. Make the tickets affordable, and they will come. READ MORE