Photo: Marcha Ni una menos, Buenos Aires, 2018 On the Intolerable in Dance I recently saw Angelin Preljocaj’s Rite of Spring (2001) on film. This was the latest of many ballets staged by the French choreographer from the repertoire of the Ballets Russes. Earlier Preljocaj had offered the world his Le Spectre . . .
Read More
Photo: Arthur Mitchell and Diana Adams in Agon (1957) by George Balanchine. Photo by Martha Swope ©The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Sex and Death Several nineteenth-century story ballets that have survived the passage of time have similar scenarios. In Giselle (1841), a nobleman groomed to marry a woman . . .
Read More
Introduction: The Classic and the Offending Classic Cover Image: William Blake, Oberon, Titania, and Puck with Fairies Dancing. (circa 1786). Pencil and watercolor, 1’7” x 2’ 3” [From William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream] Last year, dance historian Mark Franko published an essay in the Massachusetts Review on Jerome Robbins’s Opus Jazz, . . .
Read More
Mira Nadon in George Balanchine’s Movements for Piano and Orchestra. Photographer: Erin Baiano. Courtesy of the New York City Ballet. Amongst the diverse offerings of New York City Ballet this winter season, an intriguing cross-section of Balanchine/Stravinsky neoclassical ballets stretching from 1944 to 1972 were programmed. Provocative pairings and insightful performances increased . . .
Read More
(Documentary Poster, Courtesy of the Archive of the American Dance Festival) Pearl Primus, Omowale, Child Returned Home is a new documentary by Stan Sherer, in collaboration with Peggy and Murray Schwartz, authors of the Primus biography, The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus (Yale, 2011). Pearl Primus (1919-1994) blazed onto . . .
Read More
Andrew DeVries, The Other Side of Eden. Courtesy of the artist. Among the lesser discussed aspects of “mainstream” theater (and film as well as TV) in the U.S. is its overarching goal to stir proud “insider” feelings in its large-scale audiences. Realism became a major implement in that regard. What could make . . .
Read More
(Wadsworth Jarrell, Heritage (1973), The Cleveland Museum of Art. With kind permission of the artist.) I’ve been trying to find a way to frame an idea, and I believe my somewhat pithy title above basically catches it. When social upheavals occur, people do many things to find solace, including looking to pets . . .
Read More