By Elise Knutsen 3/14 2:32pm

Shindigger

Marcelo Gomes, Misty Copeland and Craig Salstein lift and tuck.

Eat, Dance and Be Merry: The American Ballet Theatre’s Culinary Pas de Deux

Walking past rows of conspicuous hood ornaments at the Chelsea Piers, The Observer could smell the party well before we could see it. A heady mixture of curry and truffles filled the parking lot as we trekked to Manhattan’s western extremity, the Lighthouse at Pier 61.

At the entrance to the American Ballet Theatre’s Culinary Pas de Deux, we were greeted by several young dancers in Renaissance peasant costumes. With deep curtsies, the ballerinas directed us inside.
The space had been converted into a veritable smorgasbord for the grand alimentary fete, with chefs from the city’s top restaurants churning out hundreds of mini dishes for the guests to enjoy. Serving stations, interspersed with well-stocked bars, became the sites of swirling feeding frenzies as attendees strove to get their fill. Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 12/13/11 5:41pm

Dance

"Biped" (1999) (Stephanie Berger/BAM)

The Long Goodbye: Merce Cunningham Has His Last Posthumous Turn at BAM

This past week marked a unique circumstance in the history of dance in America—the first time I can think of when a major figure took a last (posthumous) bow and shut up shop. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company gave four performances at BAM, featuring six of Cunningham’s major works, and apart from several Events—pieces being performed simultaneously on three stages (the audience wanders from one to another for 45 minutes) later in the month at the Park Avenue Armory—it has only a two-week season in Paris remaining before it permanently disbands. Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 10/18/11 6:25pm

Dance

Ian Douglass.

Expert Witnesses: A Brilliant Spin in Rachid Ouramdane’s Concept Dance

In the mid-’90s, Arlene Croce brought down the wrath of the P.C. gods on herself when she refused to review a Bill T. Jones work called Still/Here on the grounds that it was victim art, and that “by working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism.” Today, long after the fuss has died down, the lesson is worth remembering. When confronted with AIDS, torture, the Holocaust, we can’t (and shouldn’t) turn off our human reactions, which means, however, that to a certain extent we have to turn off our critical faculties. Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 10/11/11 6:00pm

ballet

Sterling Hyltin and Andrew Veyette in "Rubies" from Jewels. (Photo: Paul Kolnik)

City Ballet’s September Start

Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet’s ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vine, we wake up after the dog days of August with something to look at. It’s unfortunate that this became possible only when the financially floundering City Opera was forced to decamp from the David H. Koch Theater. (To be fair, this is one thing we can’t blame on David H. Koch and his politics.) But at least the opera’s loss is dance’s gain. Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 9/27/11 9:39pm

Culture

Ocean's Kingdom 7

Paul McCartney and Peter Martins’s Soggy Ocean Kingdom

The cows in Stella Gibbons’s immortal Cold Comfort Farm are named Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless, and that more or less is the verdict on Ocean’s Kingdom, the wildly hyped and wildly uninteresting collaboration between Peter Martins and Paul McCartney. (Sorry—Sir Paul McCartney; no P.R. release or press mention omits the knighthood.) If only Gibbons had given us a fifth cow: Endless. Read More

By Ruirui Kuang 7/19/11 5:20pm

Art World

Dancers Perform On Vanishing by Jonah Bokaer

They Loved Jonah Bokaer's Paperwork at the Guggenheim

At the Guggenheim’s rotunda on Thursday evening, five dancers, accompanied by John Cage’s solo cello piece One8, performed On Vanishing, a new work by the young New York-based choreographer Jonah Bokaer that the museum had commissioned in conjunction with its current exhibition, Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity.

Audience members, including Mr. Bokaer’s mother, leaned against the museum’s low, spiraling Read More

By Rex Reed 5/25/11 12:08am

Caberet

Rave Revue: Cy Coleman’s Best Comes To Life

New definition of joy: 85 uninterrupted minutes of my friend Cy Coleman’s songs at the 59E59 Theater called “The Best is Yet to Come.” The tiered stage in black and silver is an art deco version of a musical night club from an old Hollywood movie-RKO, not MGM. Jazzed up with New York hormones to Read More