Strong women of European dance at Biennale Festival
Jul
20
2014
Attending one week of the recently concluded Biennale Dance 2014 in Venice, I was struck and impressed by the strong roster of female dancers and choreographers on display. A critical round-up of the Festival just published on The Huffington Post.
‘Solo for Two’ in steady preparation at Segerstrom Center
Jul
17
2014
It’s a pretty big stage — that’s why we love watching the great ballet companies of the world bourée and jeté across it. So let’s see how two of our best, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, succeed in riveting our attention over their full-evening performance “Solo for Two.” The showcase by the diminutive Russian duo, ...
Ivan Kirov, the dancing star of “Specter of the Rose” 1
“I’m no good. I’m just some muscles that can dance. The rest of me is rubbish — broken glass and rubbish.” So self-describes the lead character, Andre Sanine, of “Specter of the Rose” (1946, Republic Pictures). He’s mouthing writer-producer-director Ben Hecht’s lurid and kitsch-adjacent movie dialogue. Hecht created “Specter” in a couple of weeks, for ...
Review: National Ballet of Canada’s “Romeo and Juliet” at the Music Center
Alexei Ratmansky’s infusion of ballet classicism with inventive, sometimes quirky, contemporary dance movement reinvigorated “Romeo and Juliet” for a new generation last night at the Los Angeles Music Center. The National Ballet of Canada‘s compelling opening-night performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was further enlivened by live orchestral delivery of the Prokofiev score. Despite minor fits ...
Specter of Nijinsky haunts Republic Pictures’ “Specter of the Rose”
The photo captures the marvelous opening scene of “Specter of the Rose,” a ballet movie from 1946 and a precious artifact of high-Hollywood dance-schmaltz. Dame Judith Anderson, seated at left, knitting, plays “Madam La Sylph,” the ballet mistress whom Ben Hecht, in his at-once overheated and acerbic screenplay, refers to as “the remains of a ...
Italian choreographer Dewey Dell’s “Marzo” smartly advances dance
At long last, something new, thank God. It took a cluster of young Italians to inject pop and sizzle into dance’s tired traditional proscenium-arch format, creating a “screen” within the frame, replicating the tiny rectangles into which most audience members gaze much of their day. And I think “Marzo” (Italian for “March”), a super flamboyant work ...
Steve Paxton lionized in Venice 3
In an incredibly generous and appropriate act of recognition, the International Dance Festival of the Venice Biennale last week honored American modern dancer Steve Paxton with one of the art world’s greatest accolades: the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance. The Biennale dance division, under the directorship of Virgilio Sieni, offered the following in praise ...
Frutti di danza italiano
Jun
26
2014
I’ve been dining on Italy’s delightful frutti di mare dishes – pasta, pizza – since arriving in Venice Tuesday to attend the second and final week of BIENNALE DANCE 2014. The dance on offer in the Festival strikes me as rich and abundant as that hearty Italian seafood mix … so, then, a tour of DANCE ...
Dance Biennale 2014: Marina Giovannini meditates on beauty
The second week of BIENNALE DANCE 2014, an ambitious urban festival showcasing contemporary choreography whose tag line, “Gesture, Place, Community,” reflects curator Virgilio Sieni’s high aspiration for the art form, got off to a particularly strong start Tuesday evening in Venice. Among four vivid presentations by choreographers Sieni, Roy Assaf and duo Raffaella Giordano/Maria Muñoz, a ...
Biennale Dance Festival finds new humanity for art form
Venice’s enchanting waterways have given rise, lately, to political discord, when on June 4, Mayor Giorgio Orsoni and 30 fellow government officials were charged with corruption related to flood-control project Mose. But the converging Po and Piave Rivers will soon revert to a more customary role – acting as a fluid crossroads for a vanguard of ...