Photo by Lois GreenfieldIN A YEAR THAT CAME IN WITH A BANG AND WENT OUT with a decided whimper, there were these 10 memorable performances, in no particular order: AMERICAN REPERTORY DANCE COMPANY There's a lot of jiving about the pros and cons of reconstructions. Well done, they are as......
Jacques Heim’s energy, passion, charm and magnanimity are so ruthless that if you were to cage this choreographer in a solid-sided box with only his head peeping out of a hole in the top, he‘d probably still give a brilliant interview, after which you’d swear he had been moving about......
Three distinct images from Pina Bausch’s Nelken are famous. We know them from photographs in books and magazines and news clips ever since Nelken (Carnations) was first performed, in 1982. They are of a man standing alone in a field of over 8,000 pink carnations; of German shepherds patrolling the......
Photo by Lois GreenfieldART TRANSFERS POWER. DANCERS HAVE ALWAYS known this. It's what they were doing in the village circles and the royal courts: sharing and spreading power. But in the late 20th century, a critic doesn't necessarily expect to be motivated by art to take an active role in......
Photo by Chris CallisMERCE CUNNINGHAM IS ABOUT DISCOVERY. AFTER two fiendishly complex and elegant programs at UCLA's Royce Hall on April 16 and 17, it's clear that the best way to see Cunningham's choreography is probably five nights in a row. His is not easy and comfortable material. It demands......
Photo by Lois GreenfieldWITH EACH NEW DANCE, PAUL TAYLOR STEPS FURTHER into the public domain. He seems to be everywhere these days: on billboards, in bookstores, on marquees. Fans know exactly who he is when he saunters out of the Alex Theater in a brown tweed jacket and tie. The......
IN THE MARCH ISSUE OF DANCE MAGAZINE, there's a list of the readers' choices for the Top 10 dancers of the 20th century. As might be expected, Baryshnikov is number one, but what's incredible -- and worth pondering -- is that Anna Pavlova comes fourth (after Nureyev and Fonteyn), Nijinsky......
At the beginning of Alonzo King’s Three Stops on the Way Home — created in 1997 with a breathtaking commissioned score by Pharoah Sanders — two women question and answer each other through movements from a classical-ballet textbook. But their body weight is located in their kneecaps. They’re sinuous and......
Photo by Carol Rosegg/Joan MarcusAbout dance in 1998, this can be said: It is getting harder to support a company, to keep one's grasp on dancers, to feed them, and have them be seen by a broad and discerning audience. Distractions abound. The following picks, listed in no particular order,......
Photo by Isabelle MeisterIn her opener -- one of two improvisations titled "Animation" -- at Highways Performance Space on December 11 and 12, Simone Forti showed interest in the idea of "reaching backward to my future." At that moment, in that small space, she recalled a red spider crawling up......
