Sweet Fields
According to artistic director Peter Boal’s welcome letter for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s fifth season program, the most popular mixed rep slates at PNB feature works by Crystal Pite or Twyla Tharp.
Continue ReadingWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
I went to see “Illinoise” on its last day at the Park Avenue Armory. The Justin Peck production was already set to move to Broadway, and Sufjan Stevens fans were already ecstatic: the singer-songwriter’s deeply felt, ingeniously conceived 2005 album Illinois is not only the impetus and origin of the Peck dancical but also its libretto and score, with a group of wondrous winged singers and multi-instrumental musicians scaffolded above the stage performing the album in its overwhelming entirety, though re-arranged a bit and shuffled. The critics had also already weighed in; they divided sharply between those, usually from the theater world, who deemed the 90-minute show sweet and novel for being as wordless as “Movin’ Out” and those, from the dance end, who found it cloying and sentimental.
But no one mentioned God.
Performance
Place
Words
According to artistic director Peter Boal’s welcome letter for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s fifth season program, the most popular mixed rep slates at PNB feature works by Crystal Pite or Twyla Tharp.
Continue ReadingLassoing is a surprising through-line for a Martha Graham Dance Company performance. The theme steps generally tend towards the child-birthing variety: contractions and deep squats.
Continue ReadingAs a dance viewer, it’s easy to get swept up in the grand movements in a piece, glossing over the finer details.
Continue ReadingHubbard Street Dance Chicago was in New York for a two-week run March 12–24 at the Joyce Theater, a venue that consistently programs excellent smaller dance companies in its 472-seat theater.
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Thank you, Rachel. I see things that need tweaking. (I wrote it too fast, for me.) But thank you.
What a deeply considered, sensitive, and evocative review. Thank you.