Praetorius, a Princess and a Pea

Nadia Nabil’s designs for The Princess and the Pea

Nadia Nabil, Courtesy Praetorius

Just 24, Royal Danish Ballet soloist Tobias Praetorius is not only an accomplished technician, but already a dramatic presence onstage, with a natural talent for mime. (He was featured this year as one of our “25 to Watch.”) And now he’s increasingly in demand as a choreographer, as well. For the fall, he has been tapped by the Royal Danish Theatre to create a new ballet for children inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Princess and the Pea.” It’s part of an initiative called “Pixi” events, meant to attract kids to the performing arts. Praetorius plans to work with three well-known character dancers associated with the company—Mads Blangstrup, Femke Mølbach Slot and Morten Eggert—capitalizing on their mastery of the distinctly Danish tradition of danced storytelling and naturalistic mime. The score uses excerpts from various well-known Tchaikovsky works, and the whimsical designs, by Nadia Nabil, are inspired by the French Rococo (think Marie Antoinette). The new ballet is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 10, at the smaller black-box theater in the Royal Danish Opera House, after which it will tour around Denmark. kglteater.dk. —Marina Harss

Building Bridges

Scott Shaw, Courtesy John Hill PR

As the global fight for equity and equality forges on, the theme of Hope Mohr Dance’s 10th annual Bridge Project is uncannily timely. Titled Power Shift: Improvisation, Activism and Community, it offers 14 sessions of activist training, movement workshops and performances around anti-racism, gender equity and queer, indigenous, Latinx, Asian and African dance voices. Sessions include improvisation with Kiandanda Dance Theater director Byb Chanel Bibene, aesthetic inquiry with MacArthur fellow Liz Lerman and Bessie Award–winning performer Paloma McGregor, a story-building workshop for refugee artists with Mohr and visual artist Ranu Mukherjee, and performance by former Sasha Waltz & Guests dancer Judith Sánchez Ruíz. If social-distancing rules allow, the events will take place at various venues, including the Center for Empowering Refugees in Oakland and Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco; otherwise, they’ll move online. Sept. 13–Nov. 22. bridgeproject.art. —Claudia Bauer

Whim W’Him on the Web

Whim W’Him’s Mia Monteabaro in rehearsal for Penny Saunders and Olivier Wevers’ shared program, XALT

Stefano Altamura, Courtesy Whim W’Him

Rather than wait to find out if a live performance season would be possible, Whim W’Him instead planned for an all-digital season. IN-with-WHIM features new dance films and music alongside interviews with dancers and choreographers. A film version of artistic director Olivier Wevers’ This Is Not The Little Prince, based on the 2019 full-length, adds emphasis to the ballet’s battles with responsibility and escape. But brand-new works created for digital consumption are on tap as well. Annabelle Lopez Ochoa offers surrealistic vignettes heavy on post-production effects. The characters in Madison Olandt and Mike Tyus’ “Elsewhere” use music to distract from media onslaught in a fearful world. Joseph Hernandez choreographs a bold work inspired by aesthete Aubrey Beardsley’s burgeoning Victorian-era queer avant-garde. New pieces from Robyn Mineko Williams, Penny Saunders and Wevers complete the lineup. Capturing it all is dancer-turned-photographer-and-filmmaker Quinn Wharton, juxtaposing odd locations with time distortions to unsettling effect. IN-with-WHIM launched this summer, with notable premieres continuing through May. whimwhim.org. —Gigi Berardi

A Powerful Platform

Maria Baranova, Courtesy Forté-Saunders

Choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders and composer Everett Saunders have long produced brilliant, challenging, community-engaged art. Now, from within a difficult moment, they’ve capaciously redefined their artistic endeavors to enable the insurgent trailblazes of others. In 2018, the two artists created an incubator dedicated to Black wellness and innovation titled Art & Power. Its current aim is to support artists’ radical experiments in art, philosophy, spirituality and culture, and work across different practices to imagine other models of creativity for the COVID era. The recently started pilot initiative of the platform is a series of dance, music, film and writing investigations in the form of Satellite Residencies, so called because for the moment-, many people are stuck at home. First up: development of the couple’s own multiyear project, The Prophet’s Tale. 7nms.com. —Sydney Skybetter

West Side Redux

Ariana DeBose as Anita and David Alvarez as Bernardo in West Side Story

Niko Tavernise, Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox

Why do we keep coming back to West Side Story? The show remains irresistible to both artists and audiences, even though strong arguments have been made for abandoning it entirely. Its stereotyping of Puerto Rican culture, which none of its white creators were familiar with, is impossible to “work around.” An ambitious but muddled revival on Broadway earlier this year faltered in its attempts to address that problem—or to replace the images in our collective brain of Jerome Robbins’ original choreography.

Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation, set to come out Dec. 18, faces the same hurdles. But hope glimmers. Maybe the astonishingly talented, mindfully cast performers (all the actors playing Latinx roles have Latinx backgrounds) will bring new authenticity to the storytelling. Maybe playwright Tony Kushner’s script will find a way through the cultural complexities. Maybe choreographer Justin Peck, an heir to Robbins’ legacy with a thoroughly 21st-century mind, will push past the iconography. Maybe the brilliant Rita Moreno—the 1961 film version’s Anita, now playing a reimagined Doc—will save us all. Could be. Who knows. amblin.com. —Margaret Fuhrer

Mining the American Canon

The Joffrey Ballet in rehearsal for Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre

Cheryl Mann, Courtesy The Joffrey Ballet

British choreographer Cathy Marston will premiere her first original work for The Joffrey Ballet this winter. Her Jane Eyre—created for Northern Ballet and premiered in the U.S. at American Ballet Theatre—found particular success with the Chicago-based company last fall. Marston now looks to the American literary canon, creating a one-act ballet from John Steinbeck‘s Of Mice and Men. The 1937 novella was greeted with equal doses of praise and admonishment when it was published; it’s a tangled mess of complex concepts, weaving cognitive disability, sexual misconduct, class, power and euthanasia into a narrative about two drifters who dream of a place of their own. With Marston’s storytelling talent, Joffrey’s deep bench of theatrical dancers and an original score by Thomas Newman (the genius composer of The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty, among others), Of Mice and Men seems to be the most promising offering of the company’s first season at the Lyric Opera House. A bonus: It premieres alongside the company debut of Balanchine‘s Serenade. Feb. 17–28. joffrey.org. —Lauren Warnecke

Update:
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Joffrey has canceled the remainder of its planned performances for the 2020–21 season, including the premiere of Of Mice and Men.

Getting Back to Broadway

Heather Wines/CBS, Courtesy DKC/O&M

If anyone could conjure up a Broadway musical when there are no Broadway musicals, it would be Professor Harold Hill, the exuberant bamboozler at the heart of The Music Man. And who better to embody River City’s greatest showman than the sensational Hugh Jackman, who hasn’t been in a full-scale musical on the Great White Way since his Tony-winning romp as The Boy From Oz in 2003? This revival of Meredith Willson’s 1957 Tony winner also boasts Sutton Foster as Marian the Librarian—and with two stellar dancers leading the cast, director Jerry Zaks is bound to leave lots of room for choreographer Warren Carlyle to strut his stuff. The show was a feel-good nostalgia trip even half a century ago, and could be just what Broadway needs after lockdown. Previews are slated to begin April 7 at the Winter Garden Theatre, with opening night set for May 20. musicmanonbroadway.com.

—Sylviane Gold

Theatrics in Thebes

Lynn Lane, Courtesy Georgiou

Imagine a love child of Pina Bausch and Fellini, with commedia dell’arte theatrics and punchy visuals. Think circus, but hold the tricks and up the bizarre charm. That’s the feel of Dallas dance-theater maverick Danielle Georgiou’s work. For her upcoming project, the first-generation Cypriot American returns to her roots with an adaptation of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, the last in his Oedipus trilogy. Georgiou has been obsessed with this rarely produced play since she saw it in an ancient amphitheater in Cyprus when she was 17. But in this retelling, Georgiou and her company, Georgiou Dance Group, ask, “What would change if we listened to women?,” focusing on the perspectives of Antigone and Ismene, sisters to the warring brothers who die by each other’s hands at the end of the play. The premiere is planned for the spring, dates to be announced. dgdgdancegroup.com.

—Nancy Wozny

The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For

Shows that were called off because of the pandemic are getting second chances.

CorningWorks’

THE TIPPING POINT

The cast of THE TIPPING POINT

Frank Walsh, Courtesy CorningWorks

CorningWorks partners with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières to drive home the U.S.’s place in the global refugee crisis in THE TIPPING POINT. The work, originally set for last March, has since been retooled and recontextualized in response to the pandemic, and features a multigenerational cast including resettled refugees. Pittsburgh, March 10–21. corningworks.org.

—Steve Sucato

Akram Khan’s Creature

Jeffrey Cirio in rehearsal for Akram Khan’s Creature

Laurent Liotardo, Courtesy ENB

For Creature, his third original production for English National Ballet, Akram Khan plumbs the depths of the outsider. Set at a former Arctic research station, the ballet pulls from two macabre sources—Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—to tell the story of a being who is subjected to cruel experiments. Originally scheduled for last April, Creature tours to Chicago’s Harris Theater March 18–20, and will have its long-awaited UK debut at Sadler’s Wells in Sept. 2021. ballet.org.uk.

—Chava Lansky

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s Here + Now

Duane Rieder, Courtesy PBT

Staycee Pearl’s SKIN + saltwater marks the first premiere by a Black female choreographer in Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s 51-year history. It’s part of the company’s Here + Now program, originally slated for spring 2020, in partnership with the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. Joining Pearl’s work is the moving The Quiet Dance (2011), by fellow Steel City hero Kyle Abraham, and a reprise of Dwight Rhoden’s sleek, Paul Simon–scored Simon Said, created on the company in 2005. Apr. 8–11. pbt.org. —Steve Sucato

Flying Over Sunset

Joan Marcus, Courtesy Lincoln Center Theater

There are plenty of Tony winners in the credits for Flying Over Sunset, the James Lapine musical that takes an imaginary LSD trip with three real-life celebrities in 1950s Hollywood. But for dance fans, the chief draw will be watching Astaire Award winner Tony Yazbeck, as honorary Oscar recipient Cary Grant, tapping the choreography of Bessie Award winner Michelle Dorrance, who’s making her Broadway debut. The show was about to preview at the Vivian Beaumont Theater when the pandemic struck, and returns in spring, dates to be announced. lct.org. —Sylviane Gold

Karen Kain’s

Swan Lake

Hannah Fischer in costume for Swan Lake

Karolina Kuras, Courtesy NBoC

Since its 1877 premiere, Swan Lake has been sliced and diced every which way. National Ballet of Canada artistic director Karen Kain’s new production follows a traditional path, finding inspiration in a much-loved 20th-century version for the company by Erik Bruhn; but the pacing, technical challenges and look—including ravishingly evocative costumes by Gabriela Týlešová—are geared for today’s dancers and audiences. Originally scheduled for this past summer as the culmination of Kain’s 50th-anniversary season, the postponed production lands June 11–27. national.ballet.ca. —Michael Crabb

In the Heights

Anthony Ramos as Usnavi and Melissa Barrera as Vanessa in In the Heights

Courtesy Warner Brothers

In a world of few certainties, the In the Heights movie—based on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s beloved stage musical, starring an outstanding team of Latinx artists, featuring new choreography by Christopher Scott, and fully filmed before the pandemic—feels like a sure bet. [Cinema] lights up on Washington Heights: June 18. warnerbros.com. —Margaret Fuhrer

The Roadless Road

MELBOURNE The 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West recounts a Chinese monk’s pilgrimage to India in search of sacred Buddhist texts. That cultural and spiritual exchange is at the center of Samsara, a new collaboration between Aakash Odedra and Hu Shenyuan. Odedra, one of the foremost choreographers working from a kathak and bharata-natyam base outside India, and Shenyuan, most recently seen stateside as the concubine in Yang Liping’s Under Siege, meld their mesmerizing movement vocabularies. Their meditation on samsara, a term that commonly refers to the reincarnation cycle governed by karma but that has subtler meanings (such as the rough Mandarin translation “the roadless road”), premieres at Australia’s Asia TOPA Festival March 5–7 before traveling to Shanghai and the UK later this year. aakashodedra.co.uk.

A Dancer’s Composer

LONDON
Sadler’s Wells has brought together three wildly different choreographers to create new works to the music of Nico Muhly. Michael Keegan-Dolan, who creates strange, searing works of dance theater, selected “The Only Tune,” a dark, folksy arrangement of a classic murder ballad. Julie Cunningham, formerly of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, takes on “Drones,” a collection of pieces Muhly wrote as an attempt to honor “the subtle but constant humming found in most dwelling-places.” A new work by Justin Peck to an original score completes the triple bill, crossing the pond with a dozen New York City Ballet dancers in tow just weeks after its premiere in New York. Muhly himself conducts Britten Sinfonia to accompany all three works. March 19–21. sadlerswells.com.

Update:
New York City Ballet has cancelled its appearances in this program, due to concerns surrounding international travel in the wake of coronavirus. Justin Peck’s Rotunda will be replaced by Natalia Osipova in Ivan Perez’s Flutter, set to Nico Muhly’s “Mothertongue.”

Update (3/16/20):
Sadler’s Wells has cancelled all performances through June 9.

Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson

Cathy Marston rehearsing Mrs. Robinson at San Francisco Ballet

Erik Tomasson, Courtesy SFB

SAN FRANCISCO
Cathy Marston’s penchant for literary story ballets returns to San Francisco Ballet with Mrs. Robinson. The new one-act is based on the 1963 novella and 1967 film The Graduate. But instead of focusing on Benjamin (the Dustin Hoffman role), Marston re-centers the narrative on the impenetrable older woman with whom he has an affair (played by Anne Bancroft in the film). The premiere appears alongside artistic director Helgi Tomasson’s 7 for Eight and David Dawson’s Anima Animus. March 24–April 4. sfballet.org.

Update:
San Francisco Ballet has cancelled performances of this program, as well as its Present Perspectives triple bill, due to a California policy banning public gatherings of more than 250 people in the wake of coronavirus.

An Offer She Couldn’t Refuse

Tulsa Ballet in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Vendetta, A Mafia Story

Jeremy Charles, Courtesy Tulsa Ballet

TULSA
Pitched as Romeo & Juliet meets The Godfather, or a mixture of Broadway and film noir with a hint of vaudeville, Vendetta, A Mafia Story is not your typical night at the ballet. In 1950s Chicago, Rosalia Carbone takes over her family’s organized crime syndicate after a rivalry turns bloody on her wedding day, leaving the family patriarch dead. Created for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in 2018, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s high-octane full-length gets its American premiere at Tulsa Ballet, March 26–29. tulsaballet.org.

Update:
Tulsa Ballet has postponed performances of Vendetta, A Mafia Story in accordance with city directives limiting public gatherings. The ballet has been tentatively rescheduled for May 21–24.

A Feast of Flamenco

Simone Fratini, Courtesy New York City Center

NEW YORK CITY The 20th anniversary of New York City Center’s Flamenco Festival is coming in hot, with four programs across two weekends. Rocío Molina brings her critically acclaimed interrogation of the female body, Caída del Cielo, for one performance only on March 27. María Pagés Compañía interweaves flamenco with references to music, philosophy and dance that span eras and cultures in An Ode to Time, March 28–29. Flamenco’s traditional approach to gender expression is turned on its head in ¡VIVA!, performed by Compañía Manuel Liñán April 3. And for the grand finale, rising dancers and singers Eduardo Guerrero, María Moreno, Mercedes Ruiz and Maria Terremoto join the legendary La Chana, now 73 years old, for the Gala de Andalucia, April 4–5. nycitycenter.org.

Update:
New York City Center has cancelled Flamenco Festival 20/20, due to a New York policy banning gatherings of more than 500 people and international travel restrictions in the wake of coronavirus.

At the start of your tenure in 2017, there was some
controversy around the ratio of non–New Zealander dancers and staff hired. Has the dust finally settled?

That really never had anything to do with me. I was just the unlucky one that stepped into it. My goal was to turn the attention back to the art. As soon as we did that, all of that uproar dissipated.

Jeremy Brick, Courtesy RZNB

Why an all-female choreographer season?

Shopping for a new pair of glasses inspired my thinking about the new “2020” season as being about vision and seeing clearly. An all-women-choreographers year seems like such a feat, but it should be common. It is just as easy to hire a woman as a man.

Why do you think there is more conversation on female dancemakers lately?

What I really think has changed is social behavior. There are now more women directors of dance companies and in seats of power.

How else are you helping foster the careers of female choreographers?

What has worked well for us is to develop an ongoing relationship with choreographers. They create work for us more than once, and that helps build their popularity and connection with audiences.

Why do you think some other direc­tors have been slower to give female choreographers opportunities?

Male artistic directors have had every opportunity to hire female choreographers all along. While I applaud any effort to develop and encourage the next generation, it feels like a belated pat on the head. There is an existing generation of female choreographers doing fantastic work already. You can just pick up the phone and call them. The balance of equality rests solely on the shoulders of artistic directors, and each one of us needs to be held accountable for our choices and how we collectively shape this industry.

Stephen A’Court, Courtesy RZNB

Royal New Zealand Ballet’s 2020 Season

• New production of The Sleeping Beauty, choreographed by Danielle Rowe after Marius Petipa

• New production of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s full-length Dangerous Liaisons

• Premieres by Kiara Flavin, Andrea Schermoly and Sarah Foster-Sproull

• Company premieres of Twyla Tharp’s Waterbaby Bagatelles, Alice Topp’s Aurum and Penny Saunders’ Berceuse

• Returning rep: Foster-Sproull’s Artemis Rising and Rowe’s Remember, Mama

Never stop pushing yourself.

During a recent class, dance legend Debbie Allen shared some major wisdom—and tough love—with her students. The lesson: Dancers don’t become successful by standing on the sidelines, but by taking initiative. “I learned everybody’s part, honey, and I tried to make sure I did it better than them,” she says in this clip. “I’m not trying to make you be vicious. I’m trying to make you be sharp.” She continues, “Don’t be compromised by anybody in the front of this room that tells you you can’t. I’m telling you that you can.”

Reframe challenges as opportunities.

“Each challenge is an opportunity to evolve,” writes The Royal Ballet’s Steven McRae, who tackled singing for the Cats movie in 2019. Now, he’s moved on to a more difficult challenge: recovering from an Achilles injury. In another post, he explains how “11 weeks ago I simply couldn’t imagine walking again,” though he’s back at it already. What “impossible” task might you accomplish this year?

Aim for your goals.

At Houston Ballet, the ever-clever Chun Wai Chan relied on a bow-and-arrow prop from the company’s production of Sylvia to share some wisdom in pun form: “Aiming for what we want in 2020.” It might be cheesy, but it’s solid advice.

Don’t let past insecurities limit your future potential. 

Chloe Freytag, who danced with Miami City Ballet and now Dimensions Dance Theatre Miami, reflected on Instagram about how she’s grown as an artist over the years. “Mid decade I quit dancing because I was told my body wasn’t the right shape for ballet, particularly the way my legs looked in pink tights,” she writes. “Ended the decade performing Sugar Plum…rocking my pink tights and feeling entirely beautiful and confident.” Her takeaway? “I’m bigger than those limiting self beliefs that haunted the past decade.”

Find a support system.

Leave it to Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Ingrid Silva to provide inspiration and cuteness simultaneously. Being a dancer is a tough career, so having a support system—yes, your dog counts, too—is essential.

Make the best of any situation. 

“Bring it on” might as well be choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa‘s motto. She encourages dancers to “embrace what life offers you and give back with total generosity and commitment.” 2020’s here. Are you committed?

Life After Romeo

The cast of & Juliet in rehearsal

Johan Persson, Courtesy Dewynters

LONDON
What if, instead of reaching for a dagger after finding Romeo dead beside her, Juliet got a life? & Juliet, a new pop musical hitting the West End this month, turns Shakespeare’s tale of woe on its head. To get over Romeo, the titular heroine takes off to Paris for an adventure with her friends and trusty Nurse. Jennifer Weber’s choreography animates a soundtrack spanning ’90s chart toppers by Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys to more recent hits by Ellie Goulding and The Weeknd. Previews begin Nov. 2. andjulietthemusical.co.uk. —Courtney Escoyne

A Homegrown Triple Bill

Lindsay Thomas, Courtesy PNB

SEATTLE
For Locally Sourced, Pacific Northwest Ballet presents three premieres by Seattle-area artists. Donald Byrd, artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater, creates a piece set to music by Israeli composer Emmanuel Witzthum. The founder of Bellevue’s CHOP SHOP contemporary dance festival, Eva Stone collaborates with a female design team for FOIL, choreographed to the music of four women composers. And Seattle-born corps member Miles Pertl makes his first ballet for the main stage. Nov. 8–17. pnb.org. —Caroline Shadle

Dancing the Undanceable

Colin Dunne in his Concert

Maurice Gunning, Courtesy Blake Zidell & Associates

NEW YORK CITY
Irish and contemporary dance aficionados alike are in for a treat: Colin Dunne is back in New York City. Eight years after co-presenting Dunne’s Olivier-nominated solo show Out of Time, Baryshnikov Arts Center and Irish Arts Center again join forces for the U.S. premiere of Dunne’s 2017 solo work Concert. Dunne uses fiddle player Tommie Potts’ infamously “undanceable” album The Liffey Banks (1972) as the starting point, placing his dance in conversation with Potts’ music, and, through the use of sonic and filmic elements, Dunne himself in conversation with Potts. Nov. 14–16. bacnyc.org. —CS

It’s All Greek to Me

Dimitris Papanioannou’s The Great Tamer

Julian Mommert, Courtesy BAM

NEW YORK CITY
Avant-garde dancemaker Dimitris Papaioannou has been pushing and evading boundaries for decades, but his name (not to mention his work) is not well known stateside. Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival will give audiences a crash course with The Great Tamer, his 2017 macabre commentary on existence. Featuring nudity, Apollo-era space suits, stilts, illusions, Strauss’ “Blue Danube” waltz and a shape-shifting floor, it hovers in the gray area between nightmare and farce. Nov. 14–17. bam.org. —CE

Saluting Service

Bruce Wood’s Follow Me

Sharen Bradford, Courtesy Bruce Wood Dance

DALLAS
Bruce Wood Dance’s Harvest program is bound to be a poignant one. In honor of Veterans Day, the company will restage Wood’s 2004 Follow Me, which features servicemen and women performing alongside the company. Also on tap: the premiere of artistic director Joy Bollinger’s In My Your Head, an exploration of how American youth are reacting to today’s political climate, set to the music of Radiohead, plus a new work by Bryan Arias. Nov. 15–16. brucewooddance.org. —CE

No Lousy Chickens

Michelle Manzanales’ Con Brazos Abiertos

Paula Lobo, Courtesy Michelle Tabnick PR

NEW YORK CITY
Is West Side Story fever contagious? It spreads to the Apollo Theater this month with the premiere of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s latest work for Ballet Hispánico. Tiburones chips away at the stereotypes surrounding the Sharks to look at the fictional Puerto Rican street gang through a Latinx and gender-fluid lens. The cross-cultural reckonings with identity continue with a restaging of Andrea Miller’s Nací and a reprisal of Michelle Manzanales’ Con Brazos Abiertos. Nov. 22–23. ballethispanico.org. —CE

Pearls in PA

STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos
Kitoko Chargois, Courtesy PearlArts Studios

PITTSBURGH
Choreographer Staycee Pearl is on a mission to establish Pittsburgh as a dance destination. She’s been creating sociopolitically informed works for her company, STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos, since 2010 and opened PearlArts Studios in 2012. Now, she draws on local and national talent for Pittsburgh’s first pearlPRESENTS Dance Festival, a week packed with master classes and performances. Pearl’s troupe shares the stage with Island Moving Company and launches its touring partnership with Sidra Bell Dance New York. Completing the roster are Chitra Subramanian’s chitra.MOVES, PearlDiving Movement Residency alumni (including slowdanger and Jasmine Hearn) and a dozen local artists chosen by lottery for festival opener 3600 Seconds of Solos. June 3–9. pearlartsstudios.com. —Karen Dacko

Arabian Nights

CHARLESTON
Caracalla Dance Theatre brings an iconic collection of Arabic folklore to life in One Thousand and One Nights, which makes its U.S. debut at Spoleto Festival USA this month. The Beirut-based company’s epic production mixes ballet, Graham and Arabic folk-dance techniques with opulent designs and a score that includes Ravel’s Bolero and (of course) Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. June 7–9. spoletousa.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Integrated First

Marc Brew’s Od:yssey

Robert Howard, Courtesy Dancing Wheels

CLEVELAND
Reverse*Reboot*Reveal, from Dancing Wheels, America’s first physically integrated dance company, features three new works created by choreographers with disabilities: Marc Brew, artistic director of AXIS Dance Company; Laurel Lawson, of Full Radius Dance; and Antoine Hunter, director of San Francisco’s Urban Jazz Dance Company. Says Dancing Wheels founder/artistic director Mary Verdi-Fletcher: “Few artists with disabilities have had the opportunity to hone their skills as choreographers. We want to help change that.” June 14. dancingwheels.org. —Steve Sucato

Bye-Bye, Bolle

Roberto Bolle as Des Grieux in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon

Gene Schiavone, Courtesy ABT

NEW YORK CITY After over a decade of turning heads and breaking hearts at American Ballet Theatre, Roberto Bolle is saying good-bye to the company. The international star’s final ABT performances will be as the idealistic Des Grieux in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s tragic Manon, dancing opposite Hee Seo for both the opening night of the ballet on June 17 and at a special farewell performance June 20. Bring your tissues. abt.org. —CE

Pure Imagination

Post:Ballet
Quinn Wharton, Courtesy Post:Ballet

SAN FRANCISCO
What happens when you place dancers inside an augmented-reality art installation that’s activated by movement? Visitors to Onedome will find out when Post:Ballet takes over LMNL and The Unreal Garden, two of the interactive venue’s mixed-reality spaces that blend art, architecture and multimedia. The premiere is appropriately titled Mirage. June 21–22. postballet.org. —CE

Update: As of June 10, this production has been cancelled due to an issue with the venue.

Le Petit Prince

This summer, two versions of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic tale of love, loss and societal malaise premiere.

Whim W’Him in rehearsal
Stefano Altamura, Courtesy Whim W’Him

This Is Not The Little Prince

SEATTLE Olivier Wevers’ all-original This Is Not The Little Prince, for Whim W’Him, gives a surreal rendering, using a monochromatic stage setting and shadow lighting. Says Wevers, “I want to challenge the audience’s sensibilities, combining Saint-Exupéry’s anti-realism with René Magritte’s jarring aesthetic.” June 7–15. whimwhim.org. —Gigi Berardi

BalletX’s Roderick Phifer
Gabriel Bienczycki, Courtesy BalletX

The Little Prince

PHILADELPHIA Masterful storyteller Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s premiere for BalletX explores how the pilot’s meeting with the titular prince leads him to ask life’s big questions. “The Little Prince is the pilot’s inner voice, the vivid child imagination that each adult has,” says Ochoa. July 10–21. balletx.org. —GB

This month’s Fall Series will include premieres from Marguerite Donlon, Cayetano Soto and Wubkje Kuindersma, while the Spring Series will feature new works by Lil Buck, Nicolo Fonte and 2019 choreographic fellow Katarzyna Skarpetowska. Annabelle Lopez Ochoa will return to BalletX to create an evening-length ballet inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince for the Summer Series.

Premieres aren’t all that’s new this season: A renovated 5,000-square-foot warehouse is now the company’s Center for World Premiere Choreography, a dedicated space for BalletX to develop its programming. With 11 dancers now working a minimum of 35 weeks a year, it was no longer feasible to rent different rehearsal spaces around town. As Cox began talks with developers and their Philadelphia community about the possibility of their own building, she found there was a huge amount of support around the idea. “I am most proud of the curious audience we have developed,” says Cox. “We have worked hard at building an audience that is invested in supporting new ballets. And they know they don’t have to love every work, that it is about the experience.”

Intimacy and Insight

A.I.M will perform Kyle Abraham’s Dearest Home at The Joyce Theater during NY Quadrille. Photo by Carrie Schneider, Courtesy Richard Kornberg & Associates

NEW YORK CITY The good sight lines at The Joyce Theater are ideal for dance, but in 2016 Lar Lubovitch decided the theater needed a change. He created NY Quadrille, a series in which the Joyce space was transformed from a traditional proscenium into a four-sided stage that allowed us to see—literally—more sides to each participating choreographer. Taking part this year: John Jasperse, Kyle Abraham, Beth Gill, Donna Uchizono and Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener. All have tested the boundaries of intimacy in their work, so it will be fascinating to see how each handles this more exposed performance setup. Sept. 24–Oct. 13. joyce.org. —Wendy Perron

Flamenco’s New Flame

Eduardo Guerrero. Photo by Marjon Broeks, Courtesy Columbia Artists Management

U.S. TOUR
Eduardo Guerrero blazed his way onto our “25 to Watch” list earlier this year with his breathtaking flamenco technique and edgy contemporary sensibility. Now, the boundary-pushing dancer-choreographer is touring the U.S. with his Compania Flamenca Eduardo Guerrero, presenting Flamenco Pasion, an evening-length program of shorter group and solo works. The tour will hit 17 stops beginning Sept. 30 in South Carolina and concluding Nov. 2 in Arizona. eduardo-guerrero.com. —Courtney Escoyne

Take Me Out to the Fall Game

NEW YORK CITY For only $15 a throw, Fall for Dance is a populist’s dream. Dance lovers from every neighborhood come to New York City Center and show their appreciation with hoots and hollers. For its 15th year, the festival sprinkles commissions from six choreographers over the two-week, 20-company festival: American Ballet Theatre’s Gemma Bond, international favorite Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer Justin Peck, commercial powerhouse Sonya Tayeh, tap diva Caleb Teicher, and Jennifer Weber, who is creating a work for Tiler Peck and Lil Buck set to Stravinsky’s Petrushka. For extra celebratory fizz, come early on Oct. 1, when audience members are invited for a champagne toast, archive exhibit and pop-up performances. Oct. 1–13. nycitycenter.org. —WP

Out at Sea

Oregon Ballet Theatre performed the third act of Napoli in 2015. Photo by James McGrew, Courtesy OBT

PORTLAND, OR Boy meets girl, girl insists on marrying boy despite parental disapproval, girl is lost at sea, loses her memory and becomes a sea nymph, but is ultimately reunited with boy for a third-act wedding. The plot of August Bournonville’s Napoli traces familiar (if zany) contours, but the 1842 ballet, long a classic in Denmark, is largely absent from American stages. Oregon Ballet Theatre becomes the first U.S. company to stage a complete production this month. With former Royal Danish Ballet artistic director Frank Andersen at the helm, Napoli will offer a rare glimpse at the nuanced Bournonville style so rarely seen in the U.S. Oct. 6–13. obt.org. —CE

Nasty Women

Works inspired by radical, revered writings from female authors

extreme lyric I

Hope Mohr’s extreme lyric I. Photo by Margo Moritz, Courtesy John Hill PR

SAN FRANCISCO
The poet Sappho’s unparalleled, incomplete musings on female desire feature in Hope Mohr’s latest work, extreme lyric I. Anne Carson’s translations are interwoven with an original text exploring questions of gender identity and narrative, delivered by transgender writer Maxe Crandall. Oct. 4–6. hopemohr.org. —CE

The Handmaid’s Tale

Lila York’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Photo by David Cooper, Courtesy Royal Winnipeg Ballet

WINNIPEG
Royal Winnipeg Ballet wades into the #MeToo movement with a revival of The Handmaid’s Tale, Lila York’s 2013 adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel. Through a series of vignettes, audiences follow Offred’s struggle to survive in a brutally patriarchal society. Oct. 10–14. rwb.org. —CE

Two Households, Both Alike in Dignity

L.A. Dance Project. Photo by Laurent Philippe, Courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic

LOS ANGELES The Los Angeles Philharmonic continues its recent streak of intriguing collaborations with dance artists this month with performances of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet. L.A. Dance Project will animate the cinematic score with choreography by artistic director Benjamin Millepied, including the iconic balcony scene. Oct. 18–21. laphil.com. —CE

 

Ballet Hispanico in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s
Sombrerisimo. Photo by Paula Lobo, Courtesy Ballet Hispanico.

 

Anchored in the old, hungry for the new, contemporary ballet is a style that remains ambiguous. It allows the body to careen off balance and the stage relationships to shift. It’s less bent on creating masterworks, and more curious to be playing in a sandbox of possibilities. But is contemporary ballet any ballet being made today? Or is there a particular tone, approach or style that marks it as contemporary? Dance Magazine spoke to five choreographers attached to this label to learn what it means to them.

 

 

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

Freelance choreographer

Classical ballet was very much directed toward the audience. Neoclassical started to change the shapes but was still toward the audience. With contemporary ballet, you turn the room. The audience is asked to look at what is happening between the dancers. But it still uses the classical vocabulary and the aesthetic of a beautiful line.

For me, the woman in classical ballet is so feminine, and I try to change that frail thing so she’s not that 16-year-old princess. I want her to be a woman of our time. She’s stronger. When I use pointework, it’s lower: I have the girls hanging more with their hip, forward or back. I’m looking to use the fluidity of my contemporary work in pointe shoes. I also try to change the position of the female dancer in relation to the male. I make her more powerful and him more visible, so he’s not just lifting her up and down. I try to find tender moments from him toward her, so it’s not that he’s always strong and she has to be as light as possible.

 

Above: Ochoa rehearsing
Sombrerisimo. Photo by Paula Lobo, Courtesy Ballet Hispanico.

 

 

Helen Pickett

Choreographer in residence, Atlanta Ballet

There’s a quandary about the definition of contemporary ballet that hovers over the ballet world. The term at times seems deliberately ambiguous, almost as though we don’t want to define this era, to stay loose about it so it doesn’t get fixed.

But we need to be clear so dancers can be clear. How do we define this for dancers going to auditions? With the dancers who come to contemporary ballet auditions, there isn’t that beautiful command of the pointe shoe where it’s malleable and looks like part of the foot, or that deconstructed torso, where energy bounces into the torso, then back out into the limbs.

Here’s a definition: Work where the dancer has an incredible sense of complex coordination, where the full body is contributing to the movement and not the pose. It’s that overt sense of épaulement. In Forsythe’s company, where I danced for 12 years, it was about the fully investigated body, absolute physical prowess, going to the end of a movement and asking, How does that take you to the next place?

The classical technique, the anchor, must be there so the riffs can happen. And perhaps the riff is the contemporary part of ballet. Like jazz riffs, like in a poetry jam, you have your anchor and then you go from there.

 

Right: Pickett in an Atlanta Ballet rehearsal. Photo by Charlie McCullers, Courtesy Atlanta Ballet.

 

 

Christopher Wheeldon

Artistic associate, The Royal Ballet

Associate artist, Sadler’s Wells

For me, contemporary ballet means any ballet choreography made today. I consider all of my ballets, story or abstract, to be contemporary ballet. The real question, I suppose, is, What defines a ballet? For me, the pointe shoe is one of the major factors that define a dance piece as a ballet rather than modern dance. However, my movement language comes from many influences, including modern dance.

 

Above: Wheeldon working on
An American in Paris with Nathan Madden. Photo by Matt Trent, Courtesy Wheeldon.

 

 

 

Above: James Whiteside and Whitney Jensen in Elo’s
Brake the Eyes. Photo by Gene Schiavone, Courtesy Boston Ballet.

 

Jorma Elo

Resident choreographer, Boston Ballet

There should be some sort of investigating of movement that is not directly taken from the ballet book, something new so you’re not just repeating what the vocabulary has been for hundreds of years. For example, I base my knowledge of how to use the back from Cunningham and from Graham technique, as well as my Vaganova training. I use angles from the legs, from the arms, other parts of the body; I don’t isolate the spine. Some dancers more easily go into movement research. They are not afraid to be in situations that are unfamiliar; they are mentally more flexible.

 

Above: Elo setting work at Boston Ballet. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor, Courtesy Boston Ballet.

 

 

Crystal Pite

Artistic director, Kidd Pivot

Associate choreographer, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater

Associate artist, Sadler’s Wells

It’s hard to find new language within classical ballet, but now there’s more openness to bringing in a new vocabulary and smashing it together with the ballet body. At the Paris Opéra Ballet, for example, there’s work by Emanuel Gat, Sasha Waltz, Jérôme Bel. Even though I danced with Forsythe, now when I work with a ballet company, I feel like I speak a different language. I think, How do I get back into pointe and do I want to? Emergence at National Ballet of Canada was about being otherworldly and alien and insect-like, and the pointe shoes really lent themselves to that strange creature-like state. But to use pointe shoes to try to get at other kinds of content, I don’t really have an interest in that.

Maybe the question is, What kind of training does a company do every morning? Are they at the barre, doing tendus? At Cedar Lake they do ballet every day, but they might do improv depending on who’s visiting. At Kidd Pivot, every once in a while we’ll do a quick-and-dirty barre. It’s healthy to be training in different ways. If ballet is in the mix, great. But it needs to be one part of a bigger picture.

 

Right: Pite rehearsing
Emergence at NBOC. Photo by Sian Richards; Courtesy NBOC. 

 

 

Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine editor at large, is author of
Through the Eyes of a Dancer. Her website is wendyperron.com.

What’s behind the recent comeback of narrative ballets?

 

The Royal Ballet’s Jonathan Howells and Sarah Lamb in Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Photo by Johan Persson, Courtesy Royal Opera House

Everyone loves a good story. They drive our imaginations, teach us life lessons and entertain us. They also warn us not to hold grudges against cradled babies, trust seductive women in black tutus or casually flirt with vulnerable peasant girls. From its historic beginnings, ballet has been a narrative-driven art form, so it’s not surprising that tradition has held fast, even through the era of postmodernism.

But the recent proliferation of new story bal­lets, usually full-length, by popular choreographers such as Christopher Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky, seems exceptional. Even choreographers who made careers in abstract works have recently followed the temptation: Peter Martins created the underwater fantasy Ocean’s Kingdom in 2011; Twyla Tharp took on the children’s novel The Princess and the Goblin in 2012; Wayne McGregor collaborated with author Audrey Niffenegger to make The Raven Girl in 2013. And last September, the Joffrey Ballet received a $500,000 challenge grant from the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation towards an endowment specifically for the creation, production and performance of full-length story ballets.

Right: Scottish Ballet in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s
A Streetcar Named Desire. Photo by Andrew Ross, Courtesy Scottish Ballet

But wasn’t Balanchine’s aesthetic—dropkick the libretto and allow the choreography to tell its own story—supposed to have dramatically shifted the focus of American choreography to pure dance? Certainly, over the past few decades, audiences came to expect innovation from the abstract more than from the literal. Few would have predicted evening-long narratives to be the future of ballet.

Yet today there seems to be an increasing need to feed the public stories. Hamburg Ballet artistic director John Neumeier has been creating psychologically driven narrative ballets for over four decades and discovered something interesting when speaking with a PhD candidate writing her thesis on his work. “There’s a theory that while postmodernism condemned anything that seemed to have a narrative,” he says, “post-postmodernism (or metamodernism) has turned toward drama and the necessity to give in to the desire for drama in one’s life.”

But how does that play with members of the millennial generation who want something right this nanosecond on their iPhones? Is there patience for a full evening in the theater? Neumeier points to the enormous popularity of television series like “Homeland,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” that require committing to the long haul. “They involve the lengthy process of the destiny of a person and others,” he says. “In addition to the quickness of this generation, there is also a desire for the long, big story.”

Left: Carsten Jung and Alina Cojocaru in Neumeier’s
Liliom. Photo by Holger Badekow, Courtesy Hamburg Ballet

William Whitener agrees. “People are accustomed to a narrative in film and TV,” says the former artistic director of Kansas City Ballet, whose original three-act Tom Sawyer was a hit in 2011. “Depending on an audience’s level of exposure to dance, they might find they’re more comfortable with the familiarity of the story.”

Yet passion for drama is one thing and successfully conveying it is another.
Christopher Wheeldon, his global success with pure dance works like Polyphonia notwithstanding, has choreographed a number of full-length ballets: His most recent include Cinderella, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale, which The Royal will premiere in April. Wheeldon points out that ballet’s ethereal properties often work against the grounded nature of linear contemporary stories. “Choreographers gravitate to fantasy, escape and romance because these are themes that work in the pointe shoe,” says Wheeldon. “I think it’s more of a challenge to depict modern stories using such a refined and specialized dance form. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I think it poses more complex problems. You’re more likely to see a contemporary dance choreographer tackle themes of today.” For Wheeldon, a return to stories means that new ballets often have more in common with Tchaikovsky’s fairy tales than they do with the gritty contemporary realities audiences typically see in other art forms today.

But that doesn’t mean classical choreographers haven’t tried tackling more current themes. In 2012, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa (collaborating with director Nancy Meckler) choreographed a highly successful A Streetcar Named Desire for the Scottish Ballet. “I chose Tennessee Williams’ play because it’s an amazing and poignant story that I feel is still relevant nowadays,” says Ochoa, who had never choreographed a narrative work before. “I’m not the fairy tale type of gal, so my aim was always to choreograph a ballet about real people’s drama.”

Right: Kansas City Ballet in William Whitener’s
Tom Sawyer. Photo by Steve Wilson, Courtesy KCB

Neumeier choreographed his version of A Streetcar Named Desire for Marcia Haydée in 1983 because Williams’ play “is full of music and layers of dreams and desire and poetic substance.” But, he adds, “I don’t think I could create a ballet on a play by Arthur Miller because the words are so important and the material is so realistic that it doesn’t really lend itself to a nonrealistic structure or form.”

According to Neumeier, just as in translating texts to another language, the worst kind of story ballet is a word-for-word translation to the stage. He thinks it’s necessary to find “blocks of structure and to invent a parallel world.” When Neumeier begins working on Tatiana based on Eugene Onegin, which premieres this June, he won’t be discussing with the dancers what Pushkin said about Tatiana or Onegin. “When I’m making a story ballet, it’s not retelling the story, or acting out in movement the text of the prose, but actually doing a ballet about my reaction to that piece,” says Neumeier. “Translating it into a wordless medium means I have to take liberties with it. I have to find a form that will convey something that’s immediate, something of today.” Depending on the choreographer, that can result in solipsism or ingeniousness.

Arguably the most commercially successful choreographer of story ballets has been Matthew Bourne, whose iconoclastic attitude has remodeled the Tchaikovsky trifecta (Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty). He finds the pacing of ballets critical to keeping audiences engaged. “One of the things that bugs me now about the classics is they’re so slow,” says Bourne. “When the tempo becomes funereal, it loses the spirit of the music and the story.”

Left: Matthew Bourne’s
Sleeping Beauty. Photo by Mikah Smillie, Courtesy New Adventures

Bourne adds that for him, creating story ballets isn’t about maintaining tradition: “My instinct is always to do something different. When I make a work, I always try to imagine there is someone sitting there who knows nothing about the ballet or the story.” Thus in his Sleeping Beauty, Aurora turns 21 amidst Edwardian tennis matches and awakens in the 21st century. “I found the timeline really fascinating—the idea that there is a hundred-year interval in the middle of the ballet,” he says. “For my version, the styles of dance change to reflect the manners and dances of the periods.”

It seems that story ballets are here to stay. So how can they dodge Disneyfication, eschew schlocky themes, avoid portraying women as victims and stay relevant to today’s culture while representing people and circumstances that are recognizable and riveting? Perhaps with a blend of live onstage musicians, actors and dancers, suggests Ochoa, the story-ballet form can become more flexible. Commissioning new scores and including teams of all types of artistic talent, as did Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, could potentially keep things fresh. How about a Hitchcockian ballet thriller set to the music of Bernard Herrmann? Or diving into the realm of magical realism with something along the lines of the fantasy-driven film Pan’s Labyrinth? The possibilities are only limited by imagination.

Joseph Carman is a senior advising editor for
Dance Magazine.