Curtain closes twice at Laguna Dance Festival
Sep
9
2013
First, the curtain fell on the effervescent Aspen Santa Fe Ballet‘s wonderful performance at The Laguna Playhouse. Then, two hours later, down came the magic curtain over the Pacific Ocean — the California coastline town’s main attraction. Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, the second contributor in a festival that also featured Parsons Dance, surfed smoothly through ...
Choreographers also feel loss when dancers retire 1
Aug
13
2013
When the wonderful Aspen Santa Fe Ballet dancer Katie Dehler retires at the end of the month, it will be a loss for audiences. It’s also a big change for her fellow dancers, with whom Dehler has rehearsed, traveled, toured and performed over the past 12 years. But for three dance makers, all of whom ...
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet takes on Cayetano Soto 2
You’re seated amidst a smallish audience in a theater in the middle of the country. You’re not in New York, you’re not in London. But you’re watching an advancement the art of classical ballet. It’s the premiere, this past weekend in Aspen, Colorado, of a new work by Cayetano Soto for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet ...
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s alluring avenue-advertisements
Jul
16
2013
Just arrived in beautiful Aspen, Colorado, for a week-long critic’s residency with the nearly 17-year old Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. This weekend the adventurous company will perform on its home stage before traveling to Saratoga Springs, New York, for shows at the historic summer dance festival there. Cruising the avenues of Aspen, we were delighted ...
REVIEW: Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at Pepperdine
Oct
12
2012
I’ve been following the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. My first in-depth encounter was at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and then I had the rare opportunity, this past summer, to sit in on the adventurous ballet company’s rehearsals at their headquarters in Aspen. During that visit, I observed Alejandro Cerrudo, the thoughtful Spanish-born choreographer who now ...
Richard Cragun’s lasting impact on Tom Mossbrucker
Aug
13
2012
Friend of arts·meme Tom Mossbrucker writes in memorium of Richard Cragun, the tall and imposing American-born danseur noble who forged a brilliant and distinguished career at Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet in the 1970s. Cragun, 67, died this past week shocking the dance world. A dancer of his vitality seemed to be eternal. Cragun was best known ...
Chillin’ with a ballerina by a babbling brook
Jun
18
2012
Diaghilev hung around Venice’s Lido Beach with Lifar. Balanchine cooked Sunday dinners for his favorites. Ballet impresarios need down time. If they genuinely enjoy their artistic charges, they hang around with them on their day off. Here’s the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet artistic and executive director duo, Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty, on a ...
Robert Joffrey’s proteges remember him … on film and in person
Lots of interest in the Joffrey Ballet in advance of the fun, revealing, and memory-filled documentary, Joffrey Ballet: Mavericks of American Dance, which will receive nation-wide viewing this Saturday. Tom Mossbrucker, at left, memorable in the Joffrey’s production of Billy the Kid, choreography by Eugene Loring, was with the Joffrey organization from 1977 to 1998. ...
Why composer David Lang didn’t call Shostakovich, or Arvo Part, in 1975
Oct
1
2011
A few Mondays back, on September 19, in the dark days BPST (before Pacific Standard Time) … [when we only had 100 nightly arts events to attend in Los Angeles — and now we have 1,000] … one of our favorite musical societies, Jacaranda, threw a swell do at the Skirball Center. The idea was ...
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 ...