Live performance lives! at Vail Dance Festival
Melissa Toogood with other Festival Artists in Michelle Dorrance’s “New to the Session” at the Vail Dance Festival. Photo by Christopher Duggan As New York City’s dance venues gear up to re-open next month, in early August a heady mix of the city’s finest dancers brought the thrill of live dance to the Vail Dance Festival. ...
Velaslavasay Panorama, at 20, makes electric Chinese connection
The Chinese connection involved here is not really diplomacy; it’s not an economic exchange; nor is it ‘high art.’ But in a way, it encompasses all of that. It’s about culture. And it’s a cultural stretch to step into the wonder-land Sara Velas has created over the past two decades on the grounds of a ...
Dance Detective: Who chor’ed ‘An Occasional Man’ in ‘The Girl Rush’ (1955)?
courtesy of doc macro From Bob Boross:From the film “The Girl Rush” starring Rosalind Russell, Fernando Lamas, Gloria DeHaven, and Eddie Albert. Matt Mattox is a leading dancer in the film’s four dances. The choreographer is Robert Alton, although Matt told me that he choreographed the film. After examining the dances, it looks as if ...
Curtain up for ‘Bayadère’ rehearsal at Palais Garnier
Aug
8
2021
Front-row seats in a live, costumed performance would be better. But, for second best, watch this video’ed répétition, (rehearsal) of an Act Three duet from La Bayadère danced by these two full-bodied, gorgeously trained grands étoiles of Paris Opera Ballet: Amandine Albisson, as Nikiya, partnered by the hunky-but-sleek dreamboat, Hugo Marchand, as Solor. The rehearsal ...
Afternoon of a Tramp
The nymph dance in the dream sequence of the 30-minute short film Sunnyside (Charles Chaplin, 1919) has been recognized as a tribute to the ballet. Charlie met Nijinsky in December 1916.Charlie met Anna Pavlova in 1922.
Antiseptic dance antics for our era: Steve Koplowitz at The Wooden Floor
The cool kids who attend dance class at The Wooden Floor, the renowned and respected Orange County-based program that enhances youth development through dance, are not among the bummed-out performers sidelined by COVID-19. Heck no! They traded in the dance studio’s wooden floor for an asphalt parking lot! Under the command of a veritable P.T. ...
Meet director Roselynde LeBlanc of ‘Can You Bring It,’ Bill T. Jones doc
‘Can You Bring It’, courtesy Kino-Lorber films This most compelling image is from a dance work dating from 1989, Bill T. Jones’s “D-Man in the Water,” which was a tour de force group work Jones fashioned in response to the AIDs epidemic. So why does that matter now? We have a new pandemic to worry ...
Girl, you’re a woman now: arts·meme at 13
Jul
17
2021
kind of looks like arts·meme founder did at 13 While you were all watching Netflix, arts·meme celebrated her 13th birthday. Since I was also watching Netflix on May 24, I missed it as well. But hey, now that things are opening back up, … er… what’s that? We’re closing down again? Opening again? No more ...
‘United States of Abstraction’: a nice way of putting it
Jul
16
2021
Shirley Jaffe, The Red Diamond (detail), 1964 So that is what we have going on here … abstraction! Life certainly feels abstract lately. When you untether from science, reason, and truth, and when the ravings of a mad man are considered worthy of the public square, never mind that children hear his rants, things are ...
Un sueño de baile de Cuba
Jul
16
2021
Sensual and smooth. Seamless, seductive and sexy. Sublime! Sliding to the silken ‘son Cubano,’ the Cuban sound. Sleek and sensational! Dancing in a Havana dream — un sueño. The man is Victor Zapata, the lady unidentified. Tremendous dancers. In solidarity with the struggle of the Cuban people, our neighbors, our friends.