After a dance week of occasional ups and all too many downs, Mark Morris came to the rescue with a program of three works previously unseen in New York, one a world premiere. The venue was his own elegant and spacious building practically opposite BAM, his habitual stomping ground, and the three new works were Read More
Okay, dance people, buckle up–March is going to be a bumpy month. It’s a modern-dance invasion. (Paul Taylor’s come and gone; everyone else is on his/her way.) Start figuring out your priorities now … next week will be too late.
To begin with: You’re going to be spending a lot of time at the Joyce. Read More
Why do so many of us still go obsessively to the New York City Ballet? Not, alas, to see Balanchine danced fully and expressively; it happens on occasion, but not nearly often enough. Not, certainly, for the procession of new works—“novelties,” as they’re called in the ballet business—that crop up every season and, with a Read More
Bard College’s adventurous and ambitious SummerScape season, this year featuring the music of Elgar, opened with a program by the Doug Varone company. There was a provocative new piece, set to Elgar’s famous cello concerto, but in a version with piano rather than orchestra accompaniment, which makes it a very different piece of music—narrower and Read More
It’s always fascinating—and sometimes a little disquieting—when two first-rate critics violently disagree. A jarring example: the response to Doug Varone’s Dense Terrain last week at B.A.M.
Alastair Macaulay (The Times) calls it a “numbingly tedious and relentlessly earnest show…. Not one moment here is fresh.” And more of the same.
Tobi Tobias (Bloomberg) Read More
Doug Varone’s Castles is the best new dance piece I’ve seen in a long time. I watched it, with growing admiration, on three consecutive nights. It brings together, distilled and heightened, the qualities Varone is generally known for-the physical excitement, the depth of feeling, the implication of story (but what story?). And Castles perfectly suits Read More
It’s not just City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre that keep dance lovers and dance critics hopping through May and June. In the past weeks we’ve also had the popular Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joyce and the interesting Doug Varone & Dancers at Symphony Space. Both groups have strong and committed dancers, but Read More
Another December, another Alvin Ailey season. How many ways can a guy find to say the same thing yet another time: terrific dancing, stunted repertory. The success of the Ailey company is one of the great ongoing stories in American dance. What explains it? A major part of the answer certainly lies in the company’s Read More
