What makes a balletomane? A lean.
Sep
21
2011
If when peering at this Andrea Mohin photo for the New York Times … ~your heart picks up pace, ~ it messes you up, ~ you “get it,” ~ you feel deep joy … seeing the way that David Hallberg is leaning away from his “Giselle” partner, Natasha Osipova, well then … mazel tov, you’re ...
Invertigo Dance Theatre’s fun with clutter
Sep
21
2011
This image (clickable) from Invertigo Dance Theatre’s upcoming “Fun in Limbo” caught my eye. The amusing furniture-mountain was inspired, says choreographer Laura Karlin, by the Mother of all Hoarders, Miss Havisham, from Dickens’s Great Expectations. The nutty pile of junk gives physical form to the insane overabundance of data and objects swirling ’round all of ...
How could this happen? David Hallberg joins Bolshoi Ballet 2
Sep
21
2011
In a tremendous blow to American ballet, our best home-grown talent, literally a corn-fed farm boy from South Dakota, David Hallberg, 29, announced today that he is joining the Bolshoi Ballet. Ka-thunk. This caps off, in one stunning announcement, twenty years, at a minimum, of Europe stealing the U.S.’s thunder as the global bastion of ...
Jorma Elo’s smart-looking “Overglow”
Sep
18
2011
We haven’t seen “Overglow” yet. It was created just this past summer in the mystical terrain of Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, superstar choreographer, Jorma Elo, sculpted “Overglow,” set to music by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, on the bending human pretzels of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, located outside Washington ...
Serenade: C’est un ballet abstrait.
Everything sounds better in French. That’s a given. But beyond sounding beautiful, the lovely and poetic program note posted below tackles the hard job of putting the ephemeral into words. What’s the subject? “Serenade,” a ballet that in its making, and in the viewing of it, touches God. C’est un ballet abstrait. C’est- á-dire, sans intention ...
Line-up of geniuses: West Side Story’s Broadway creative/production team
The West Side Story Broadway production team in 1957: (l. to r.) lyricist Stephen Sondheim, scriptwriter Arthur Laurents, producers Hal Prince and Robert Griffith (seated), composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins. (click for detail) Thank you, songbook1, for posting this photo. Like this? Read more: Not a Jet, but still the swingingest thing: George ...
Headlining at the Rainbow Room: Jack Cole and his Dancers
Sep
14
2011
Cafe Life in New York Jack Cole and His Dancers Featured in the Rainbow Room’s New Show (by) Malcolm Johnson The New York Sun, Saturday, May 18, 1942: The Rainbow Room’s new show, introduced this week, is a gay diversion highlighted by the colorful performance of Jack Cole and his Dancers. In fact there is ...
Eiko & Koma’s ‘Water,’ in a frigid lily pond
“Water is in our bodies, rivers, sea, our womb, and our tears.” So say Eiko & Koma, the Japanese-born performance duo, in an artists’ statement. Immersed for 45 beautiful, but bitter-cold, minutes in a Skirball Center lily pond, they encourage their audience to “remember and imagine the ancient water from which all living things came.” ...
A Gish gift for Trish
Pleased to see Hollywood riches supporting New York creativity. That’s the way it oughta be. And especially nice that it’s an exchange between three creative women. [Item below re-posted from New York Times Culture Beat, September 7, 2011, 12:45 pm , by Daniel J. Wakin] Trisha Brown Wins Gish Prize A Gish for Trisha: the ...
Why art matters: Eiko & Koma and photographer Johan Elbers on lower Manhattan sand dune in 1980 2
Photo featured in Eiko & Koma: Time is not Even, Space is Not Empty Photo credit: (c)Johan Elbers (1980) Like this? Read more: Eiko & Koma’s “Event Fission” at the landfill created for the World Trade Center, 1980