Category: dance

“Albert Evans stands out. The cheap explanation is that he’s the lone African-American principal dancer in the New York City Ballet, and only its second ever, besides Arthur Mitchell in the 1950s and ’60s. But the truer distinction is artistic: regal and uninhibited, Mr. Evans moves like few others of his generation.”

“When choreographers present wrongheaded reductions of vexing, long-lived political questions, we critics too often give them a benefit of the doubt we would never extend to a playwright, a politician, a tenth grader. We may quibble with the show’s tangential ideas and execution, but we rarely question the issues on which the work is premised, however sketchily.”

“Nearly 28 million watched Wednesday’s hour-and-change finale of ‘Dancing With the Stars’ at the end of which the three-time Super Bowl champ was crowned best amateur ballroom dancer. That’s the show’s biggest audience ever. … ‘Dancing’ topped the combined audiences of CBS, NBC and Fox in the Wednesday hour by about 4 million viewers and delivered ABC’s biggest non-sports audience in the time period in nearly seven years.”

“Perhaps the worst thing in the legions of problems with Twyla Tharp’s Dylan fiasco (to close November 19 — sooner than I guessed, but not too soon) is the revenge she seeks on the slippery songs. She wants them to give up their nature and hold still. But even in neutered Broadway renditions, the songs slip away, leaving her in a vacuum.”

“Life as a Rockette appears to be a subculture of contented women where sisterhood reigns supreme, despite the gruelling 84-performance run (there are 13 shows a week). … Rockette management courts the all-rounders — intelligent women with strong personal identities and highly developed outside interests.” Management also encourages them to eat: “Each Rockette gets a Radio City Music Hall lunch pail to pack food for the theatre. One can’t be anorexic and be a Rockette, and during the physical intensity of three months of rehearsals and shows, they consume huge amounts of everything from fruit to chocolate and from hamburgers to pizza.”

” ‘I Am a Dancer’ conveys the almost religious fervor that drives many of these dancers. Asked why they dance, they answer in various ways: ‘It’s transcendence, almost a communication with God’; “It is my voice”; “It’s your heart, it’s like a high”; “I become one with everything.””

“Much of what the Kirov has been putting onstage in recent years — on tour and in St. Petersburg, Russia — is on the level of onstage training exercises. The roster has been for some time now dominated by dancers in their late teens and early 20s, while at the same time there has been an attempt to drive off dancers who might show up the fledglings.” But things may finally be looking up.

Wayne McGregor is “a dance-maker who likes to think outside the traditional box. His keen embrace of science and technology, of pop and cyber culture, has made him one of Britain’s top-ranked choreographers. He’s the shot in the arm for ballet companies seeking the next big thing. So here he is back at the Opera House, home of the Royal Ballet, a company thirsty for new adventures.”

“The most popular choreographer today, the man who is pulling in the crowds that otherwise leave dance alone, is the one who concentrates most on dance narrative: Matthew Bourne.”

A Nutcracker revival is being staged in Oakland this season, which may surprise some people, since Oakland Ballet folded in 2005. But the original founder of the now-defunct company hasn’t given up on dance in Oakland: he hopes that a successful run of Tchaikovsky’s famous holiday ballet will convince investors that Oakland Ballet is worth reviving.