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 ...
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet circles Southern California
Jul
8
2011
Editor’s note: We reprint this interview with choreographer Jorma Elo dating from 2011 to encourage you to catch a performance of the wonderful Aspen Santa Fe Ballet in the southern California region. Oct 2, Granada Theater, Santa Barbara Oct 11, Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University, Malibu Oct 13, Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach ********************************************* A ...
Twyla, Laura, and me 7
When American women demanded, and then seized, social and sexual liberation in 1970, I was an intense 15-year-old high-school girl in suburban Pittsburgh. Feminism hit me hard and it formed me. I entered young womanhood with the lovely delusion that life would deliver every achievement and pleasure I sought. Five years later, having already burned through ...