Dance of death and renewal by Pina Bausch at The Music Center
Jan
22
2024
How would you dance, if you knew you were going to die? This is the central question the late choreographer Pina Bausch (1940-2009) asked of her dancers in 1975 when she created her seminal work The Rite of Spring. The work examines an unyielding ritual in which the sacrifice of a “chosen one” changes the ...
Dancing with deer & birds: Dutch National Ballet’s ‘Frida’ at The Music Center reviewed
The deep fascination with the art and wrenching personal mythology of the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907- 54) found no better evidence than the fashion worn by the women of Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this weekend for “Frida,” the bio-ballet choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa for the Dutch National Ballet. Donning ...
REVIEW: Paul Taylor repertory a miss in Music Center dance-season opener 2
Who signed off on the venerable Paul Taylor Dance Company’s repertory-mix shared with fans at the Los Angeles Music Center this weekend? What should have been a joyous Los Angeles reunion with one of the nation’s longest-lasting dance companies (it dates from 1954!) felt like modern-dance homework. This show, in its totality, did not connect. ...
REVIEW: Go to ‘Royal’ hell, in Wayne McGregor ballet
edward watson & artists of the royal ballet, photo: cheryl mann In the first of my two viewings of choreographer Wayne McGregor‘s explosive and brilliant dance collaboration with composer Thomas Ades and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “The Dante Project Part 1 [Inferno]” danced by The Royal Ballet as a world premiere for Glorya Kaufman Presents ...
REVIEW: ‘Mayerling”s tornado at the Chandler
Kiss of Death: Natalia Osipova as Mary Vetsera, Ryoichi Hirano as Rudolf in Mayerling at the Royal Opera House. Photograph: Helen Maybanks Last night, at 8:20 pm, most of Los Angeles experienced a 7.1-magnitude earthquake. But those viewing Kenneth McMillan‘s sprawling historic dance-drama, Mayerling, performed by the Royal Ballet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of ...
Pick: Diavolo at the Music Center
There’s a dizzying amount of dance going on the next few weekends, as it is the height of the fall season. But if you really want to travel to dizzying heights, consider the upcoming offering of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center, Diavolo | Architecture in Motion at the Ahmanson Theatre. Diavolo Artistic ...
Review: ABT’s Misty·fying ‘La Bayadere’ disappoints 3
Let’s start at the end: During curtain calls at American Ballet Theatre’s “La Bayadère” Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, ballerina Isabella Boylston gave her bouquet to her partner Jeffrey Cirio with a deferential flourish. Then, in a strange, gender-bending moment, she and third lead Misty Copeland curtsied, and curtsied some more to Cirio, ...
Be sublime! instructs ‘Bayadere’ coach Susan Jones
Jun
11
2018
It was nice to hear from Susan Jones, the impassioned ballet mistress of American Ballet Theatre who lately admits to a special assignment indeed. “For weeks we have worked on every detail of La Bayadère Act 2 Shades,” she shares on Facebook, referring to the famous sequence that opens the second act of “La Bayadère,” ...
Dylan Gutierrez brings his Romeo home to L.A. with The Joffrey Ballet
The Joffrey Ballet’s Dylan Gutierrez is an LA kid. Before he hit ten, he was on stage with Placido Domingo in LA Opera’s “Falstaff” and “Sampson and Delilah” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He was a student at the Los Angeles Ballet Academy in Encino – run by his former-ballerina mother – and was once ...
Populist Eifman Ballet en route to Southern California
Choreographer Boris Eifman is the Donald Trump of the ballet world. His fans love him for his provocative, populist appeal while his critics find him unsophisticated and far from coherent. And then there’s the Russia thing. Eifman is Russian and his narrative ballets, while modernist in story line, have the old-school Bolshoi tendency to go ...