Learn to do this, New Yorkers! Study tango with greats.
Nov
8
2016
Tango seminars with masters of the form, Gabriel Misse and Carla Esponza, seen in video. A tango exhibition that is spectacular, silken, so controlled. Friday November 11, 7-10 pm Saturday November 12, 4:30-7:30 pm Sunday November 13, 5-8PM Friday November 18, 7-10 pm Saturday November 19, 4:30-7:30 pm Sunday November 20, 5-8 pm A course ...
Keep pouring ballet cocktails, ‘Ballets With A Twist’
Nov
7
2016
I’m a fan of the dance invention — and entrepreneurialism — of choreographer Marilyn Klaus. Her company, Ballets with a Twist, performs in all kinds of unexpected venues — small-to-medium-sized performing arts centers across the nation, and even lounges, cabarets, and soon, casinos. Her customized dance menus, packaged as “Cocktail Hour: The Show,” comprise 24 ...
A dance thinker & do-er: Dana Caspersen
One of many, many highlights of being a Fellow, this fall, at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU has been encountering the dancer/author Dana Caspersen. For three decades, Caspersen was a leading artist with Ballet Frankfurt and the Forsythe Company, and a primary collaborator of choreographer William Forsythe. As a dancer, she ...
Dance scholars recognized with awards in New York
Two of our smartest and best … and nicest … dance scholars are being honored in New York City this fall. On November 21, the Martha Hill Dance Fund will grant a Lifetime Achievement Award recipients to author/critic Deborah Jowitt at the Manhattan Penthouse in New York City. Journalist/critic Deborah Jowitt began to write a regular ...
As we melt down, then rebuild: Cherkaoui’s ‘Babel(Words)’
In this arresting moment from “Babel(Words)” created in 2010 in Brussels and now on view at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, co-choreographers Sidi Lardi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet bring their gang of gypsies through a ballet of physical violence that culminates in a gruesome frieze. It’s a vision that should terrify us, were it not ...
Nasty women, nasty men dance with ‘Two Hags’ sculpture: Susan Marshall & Co.
An upright metal grid of cut steel pipe bisects a table, and steel rods — sharpened to a spike — are prepared in rows. The dancers of Susan Marshall & Company pay careful attention to speed, force, and precision, while navigating dangerously sharp edges of Martha Friedman’s new sculpture, Some Hags. The spikes are pushed into ...
Happy birthday, Barrie Chase! 1
Wishing a wonderful birthday to a leggy lady, the great Hollywood dancer Barrie Chase. She not only graced Fred Astaire as his final partner, she brought her own strong, vixen presence as a solo dancer (on view in the video, dancing to “The Girl from Ipanema”) to millions of American television viewers in the 1960s. ...
Review: ballerina Wendy Whelan in new documentary 1
We all have problems, right? In the case of Wendy Whelan, the equivalent of a prima ballerina assoluta if only New York City Ballet had that designation, the problem in dance season 2013-14 was how to gracefully exit the stage and transition to civilian life. For thirty years, the reed-thin, Kentucky-born ballet-thoroughbred reigned as the ...
Looks amazing: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s ‘Babel(words)’@ Lincoln Center 2
I’m interested — who isn’t? — in the changing ways in which society is communicating. And I wonder how dance can play an active role as, increasingly, words matter less and the visual (and visceral) matters more. (A very wise man recently told us, “It’s just words.”) So I’m looking forward to “Babel(words),” a new ...
Jack Cole’s nightclub act: a talk by Debra Levine Oct 25
A review headline screamed, “Cyclone Hits Slapsy Maxie’s.” The performance? Jack Cole and His Dancers at the Wilshire Boulevard supper club in 1948. In the house: Frank Sinatra, Robert Walker, Jimmy Durante, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Jimmy Dorsey, Max Baer. Also attending, according to the review, “Bullets Durgom still without a toupee.” Cole ...