cathy marston Archives - Dance Magazine

10 Must-See Shows Hitting Stages This April

Dance Magazine — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 13:00:00 +0000

The spring performance season is moving full steam ahead with literary-inspired ballets, a queer reimagining of Carmen, and premieres drawing from everything from the upcoming solar eclipse to contemporary American politics. Here’s what’s grabbing our attention.

NDT in NYC

NDT in William Forsythe’s 12 N. Photo by Rahi Rezvani, courtesy New York City Center/NDT.

NEW YORK CITY Nederlands Dans Theater returns to New York City Center for the first time since Emily Molnar took the helm. William Forsythe’s N.N.N.N. is joined by a pair of U.S. premieres: Imre and Marne van Opstal’s The Point Being and Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s Jakie. April 3–6. nycitycenter.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Centering Latina Voices

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa rehearsing her Broken Wings with San Francisco Ballet. Photo by Lindsay Rallo, courtesy SFB.

SAN FRANCISCO The Carmen premiering at San Francisco Ballet this month won’t look or sound the same as usual. Choreographer Arielle Smith (a 2022 “25 to Watch” pick) sets the tale in contemporary Cuba—specifically at the family restaurant to which the titular heroine returns with her new husband after the death of her mother—while refocusing the story on Carmen and emphasizing the depth and complexity of the characters with cinematic flair. Escamillo, whom Carmen falls in love with, is recast as a woman, and the new score by Arturo O’Farrill only references the familiar Bizet opera as it layers in Cuban folk music. Joining the new ballet on the Dos Mujeres program is Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Frida Kahlo–inspired Broken Wings (which SFB artistic director Tamara Rojo commissioned and starred in during her English National Ballet tenure). The evening marks the first double bill choreographed by women and the first full program dedicated to Latinx stories at SFB. April 4–14. sfballet.org. —CE

Eclipsing All Else

the feath3r theory’s The Absolute Future. Photo courtesy the feath3r theory.

NEW YORK CITY Ahead of the Great North American Eclipse on April 8, the feath3r theory alights at NYU Skirball to premiere a devised dance theater work about a group of friends who team up to watch the celestial event and miss it. Raja Feather Kelly draws on Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, the popularity of the science fiction concept of the multiverse, and the ways social media exacerbates loneliness and society’s inability to face it for The Absolute Future (or Death, Loneliness, and The Absolute Future of the Multiverse, or How to Cover the Sun with Mud). April 5–6. nyuskirball.org. —CE

Carnival of Politics

Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Wendy Whelan. Photo by Leslie Lyons, courtesy SOZO.

SEATTLE Choreographed and directed by Francesca Harper and performed by dancer Wendy Whelan and poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Carnival of the Animals reframes the Camille Saint-Saëns classic to consider the animals of a political jungle as it responds to the January 6 insurrection and contemplates the future of democracy. The SOZO-produced work premieres at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts on April 6. sozoartists.com. —CE

Memories of Matriarchs

Jasmine Hearn in their Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr. Photo by Jay Warr, courtesy DiverseWorks.

HOUSTON With three “Bessie” Awards, the Rome Prize, and a sumptuous stage presence, Jasmine Hearn is one of the most acclaimed contemporary dance artists to come out of Houston. But Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr, a performance, installation, and online archive that preserves the memories of eight Black Houston matriarchs, is their first major commission in their hometown. Commissioned by DiverseWorks, the multidisciplinary project includes original sound scores, choreography, and garments, along with guest performances by former Houston Ballet soloist Sandra Organ Solis and additional vocals and performances by local dancers and “Houston Aunties,” as Hearn calls them. The premiere at Houston Met April 6–7 will be followed by tours to Pittsburgh and New York City. diverseworks.org. —Nancy Wozny

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The Royal Ballet in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works. Photo by Andrej Uspenski, courtesy ABT.

COSTA MESA, CA American Ballet Theatre presents the North American premiere of Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s three-act meditation on the writings of Virginia Woolf, at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Inspired by her novels Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves as well as her letters and diaries, the critically acclaimed ballet eschews narrative adaptation to take a stream of consciousness approach to the modernist writer’s oeuvre. April 11–14. abt.org. —CE

Packed With Premieres

South Chicago Dance Theatre’s Mya Bryant and Kim Davis. Photo by Michelle Reid Photography, courtesy SCDT.

CHICAGO South Chicago Dance Theatre returns to the Auditorium Theatre for an evening filled to the brim with premieres by Donald Byrd, Joshua Blake Carter, Monique Haley, Tsai Hsi Hung, Terence Marling, and founding executive artistic director Kia Smith. April 27. southchicagodancetheatre.com. —CE

The Weight of a Lie

Cathy Marston. Photo by Erik Tomasson, courtesy San Francisco Ballet.

ZURICH Cathy Marston brings her penchant for literary adaptation to Atonement, her first new work as Ballett Zürich’s director. In Ian McEwan’s novel and Joe Wright’s acclaimed film adaptation, teenage writer Briony Tallis tells a deliberate lie about her older sister’s lover and spends the rest of her life attempting to make up for its unintended consequences. Marston transfers the action to the world of ballet, making Tallis a choreographer while wrestling with the story’s questions about the fallibility of memory and the nature of self-deception and guilt. April 28–June 7. opernhaus.ch. —CE

A Jazzy Centennial

Dance artists join the nationwide celebration of iconic jazz drummer and composer Max Roach.

Max Roach. Photo courtesy Richard Kornberg & Associates.

Max Roach 100 at The Joyce Theater

NEW YORK CITY Richard Colton curated The Joyce Theater’s Max Roach 100 program, which will feature a new work to Roach’s Percussion Bitter Sweet album by Ronald K. Brown for Malpaso Dance Company and EVIDENCE, A Dance Company; Rennie Harris Puremovement in The Dream/It’s Time; and a solo by tap star Ayodele Casel set to a series of duets by Roach and Cecil Taylor. April 2–7. joyce.org. —CE

Bill T. Jones at Harlem Stage

NEW YORK CITY Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company revisits Degga, a 1995 collaboration between Jones, Max Roach, and Toni Morrison, as part of Harlem Stage’s E-Moves program. Also on offer is a new work by Roderick George. April 19–20. harlemstage.org. —CE

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in Curriculum II. Photo by Maria Baranova, courtesy Blake Zidell & Associates.

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The Pleasure and Pitfalls of Creating Ballets Based on Contemporary Literature

Gavin Larsen — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 13:00:00 +0000

In the closing scene of The Handmaid’s Tale, choreographed by Lila York for Royal Winnipeg Ballet and based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, peace washes over the stage. Arvo Pärt’s celestial music accompanies the lead dancer in a seamless, spiraling solo evocative of a cloud-borne dream. In the book, the central character’s fate is left ambiguous, but York chose to leave the audience with a sense of hope and possibility. She wanted to give the viewers a way out, she says, after the intensity of Atwood’s cautionary vision of a world without autonomy or reproductive rights.

“The novel is so powerful, and so plausible,” says York. “The loss of liberty depicted in the book really jarred me. It wasn’t my job to politicize it. All you can do, as an artist, is put out a warning signal.”

York is among a growing number of ballet choreographers turning to modern literature as a basis for their work. The weaving together of movement and language into art seems natural and inevitable, given ballet’s long history as a narrative art form, and our current cultural infatuation with visual storytelling as a means of communication. Yet choreographers’ interest in tying ballet directly to literature is a notable turnaround from the 20th century’s Balanchine-influenced rise of abstract, plotless ballets.

Using ballet vocabulary to retell the works of great writers is fraught with potential pitfalls. But the medium of dance can also illuminate a book (or short story, or play) afresh, encouraging new dialogue, questioning, connection, and, yes, hope.

Ballet as a Storytelling Art

The history of ballet as a storytelling art reaches back to even before the French Romantic era, and continued under Petipa, when ballet “began its transformation from popular to high art,” says dance historian Elizabeth Kendall. “You could argue that Sleeping Beauty was based on written text—tales collected by Charles Perrault—and the gestures of Vaganova training are somewhat narrative.”

Lila York (front) in rehearsal at Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Courtesy RWB.

But ballets inspired by contemporary literature (rather than classics, myths, or fairy tales) were rare. Notably, in 1952 Valerie Bettis choreographed A Streetcar Named Desire for the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet (later performed by American Ballet Theatre and Dance Theatre of Harlem), breaking new ground by using the symbolism and idiomatic language of dance to present a visually gripping take on the complex social themes of Tennessee Williams’ play.

Translating Books Into Dance

Cathy Marston was idly browsing in a British bookstore when the cover of Charles Webb’s The Graduate caught her eye. With a commission from San Francisco Ballet on her agenda, the concept of reworking the story with a different light on the iconic character of Mrs. Robinson sprang to mind. The story and its film version had painted a picture of her as a pitiful, lonely alcoholic, but Marston wanted to go deeper. “What if Mrs. Robinson had read and been inspired by the feminist movement? Would she have joined the revolution?” Marston asks. “I love investigating characters from a different perspective, looking at who they are and what they stand for, and turning those ideas on their head. There’s a lot of freedom, actually, to fill in the space between the words that have been written.”

Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Lila York’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Photo by Vince Pahkala, Courtesy RWB.

But why make a ballet based on the book instead of simply choreographing a piece about feminism? Marston finds that character specificity encourages empathy. “If you have a pas de deux about love, I want to know who’s in love and why,” she says. “It’s about joining the dots and creating something that takes you on a journey. For me, choreographing a single idea or set of ideas doesn’t do that.”

Respecting Plot While Speaking to the Present

In 2020, after taking part in a roundtable discussion on the relevance of ballet, choreographer Iyun Ashani Harrison came away wondering how he could continue making work that mattered in a time when racial, social, and cultural precedents were being vigorously challenged. One of the reasons he decided to choreograph an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room was that he resonated personally with David, its main character.

Here and below: Sarah Van Patten in San Francisco Ballet’s production of Cathy Marston’s Mrs. Robinson. Photo by Erik Tomasson, Courtesy SFB (2).

“One of the things that came out of 2020 is that the stories we tell are important,” Harrison says. “Giovanni’s Room is one of Baldwin’s strongest works, yet one that people are least aware of. I thought, Let’s elevate that.”

Scholars admire the book for its poignant representations of queer life at a time when such depictions were all but verboten in mainstream U.S. literary culture. In his adaptation for his company, Ballet Ashani, Harrison saw a chance to create dialogue about the book’s themes by situating Baldwin’s characters in a world that reflects his own—and many others’—experiences, without losing the specificity of its plot.

Brandon Penn (left) and Jam Neil Delgado Castro in Giovanni’s Room. Photo by Alec Himwich, Courtesy Harrison.

“I’m stepping away from the text to make sure certain things make sense in the medium of dance,” he says. “I use theatrical tricks as metaphor to suggest, to imply, versus being more literal and using props as in classical ballets. I want the audience to have a sense of suspended belief.” The musical score, which includes compositions by Maurice Ravel and original electronic music by Aaron Brown that incorporates spoken dialogue from the book, links the past and present, and dancers of color are cast in roles written as white.

“I want people to see inside the book, but also see my creative shifts,” he says. “The work gets into the idea there can be so much more fluidity in how people love or desire, and to keep creating understanding about people who might feel marginalized or ‘othered.’ ”

Iyun Ashani Harrison (center) with Giovanni’s Room dancers Anthony Otto Nelson Jr. and Martin Skocelas-Hunter. Photo by Alec Himwich, Courtesy Harrison.

“It’s Not a Movie, It’s a Ballet”

As marketing departments have long understood, a familiar literary title tends to attract audiences. But preconceived notions of what a popular book “should” look like can cloud viewers’ impressions when they see it in movement form. On the other hand, adhering too closely to the complexities of a written narrative, where multiple characters and subplots may lack physical action, can also backfire.

Ballet West in Val Caniparoli’s The Lottery. Photo by Luke Isley, Courtesy Ballet West.

With The Handmaid’s Tale, York (whose ballet preceded the TV series) didn’t want to graphically represent the violence in the book, even though she knew certain audiences expected it. “The book has three rapes and two hangings, but I made it in a way that was stylized, that adults would understand but would not upset children,” York says. “To make it too dark and literal would not have accomplished much in the way of my goal, which was to awaken people. It’s not a movie, it’s a ballet!”

Val Caniparoli took the opposite approach with Shirley Jackson’s famously disturbing short story “The Lottery.” He used the built-in uncertainty of live performance to intensify the story’s messages about the devastating consequences that can result from societal pressure, conformity, and ritual. In Caniparoli’s self-described “experiment,” the casting of the principal character, who performs a fiendish solo before being stoned to death, is decided each night by the dancers in an actual, onstage lottery.

Ballet West in Val Caniparoli’s The Lottery. Photo by Luke Isley, Courtesy Ballet West.

“The uneasiness the dancers had onstage, I knew the audience would also have,” he says. “It was shocking to everyone—you could hear the audience gasp every night. There’s a lot of power in that.” Blending the literal—an actual lottery—with a metaphorical climax pulls the audience that much closer, casting them as witnesses and players complicit in the tragic outcome. Caniparoli says that’s what makes a dance adaptation work.

“You have to get the audience invested, to really care about and feel for the characters onstage,” he says. “If you don’t feel for these people, it’s empty.”

Why Literary Ballet Adaptations Matter

Choreographers like Marston, Harrison, Caniparoli, and York have discovered that presenting a writer’s work through the medium of dance—where, unlike reading a book that can be set aside, they’ll take in the entire experience in one sitting—makes a special sort of impact.

The Royal Ballet’s Marcelino Sambé and Lauren Cuthbertson in Cathy Marston’s The Cellist. Photo by Bill Cooper, Courtesy Royal Opera House.

“The body can say more than one thing at a time,” says Marston. “Dance gets to an internal world more easily than through words, which are something that live in our outer world. Very often, you feel one thing and think another thing, or want two things at the same time. In movement, you can layer those things even within one body, amplifying and playing with them.”

The legalities of getting the rights to adapt a literary work, finding or creating a musical score, and securing a commission or backing to produce the work can take years. Both Caniparoli and York said their pieces were more than a decade in the making. But in today’s visually obsessed world, dance can revitalize a work of literature more than ever before. And while choreographing literature can regenerate excitement about a writer’s work, it’s also important for the dance world, Kendall says.

“Dance has to stay alive, to keep up with the times, to have people using this language to tell a story,” she says. “It’s the lifeblood of the art form. People should ask themselves, ‘What book would I like to see danced?’ ”

The post The Pleasure and Pitfalls of Creating Ballets Based on Contemporary Literature appeared first on Dance Magazine.

4 Shows Warming Up Winter’s Chilliest Month

Dance Magazine — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 15:00:00 +0000

It may be winter, but there are plenty of premieres sizzling onstage, from ballet to Broadway, Miami to San Francisco. Here are four shows we have on our radar.

New Ballets in the Bay

San Francisco Ballet’s Nikisha Fogo rehearsing Forsythe’s Blake Works I. Photo by Erik Tomasson, Courtesy SFB

SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco Ballet kicks off its 2022 repertory season—the last with artistic director Helgi Tomasson at the helm—with a pair of triple bills. The first is headlined by the long-awaited premiere of Mrs. Robinson, Cathy Marston’s reimagining of The Graduate, which was originally scheduled for the 2020 season. It joins Balanchine’s Symphony in C and Tomasson’s Trio beginning Feb. 1. The second program, opening Feb. 3, boasts the company premiere of William Forsythe’s Blake Works I, set to the music of James Blake and originally created for Paris Opéra Ballet in 2016, alongside Tomasson’s Caprice and Jerome Robbins’ In the Night. Feb. 1–13. sfballet.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Bill T. Off-Broadway

Bill T. Jones, in rehearsal for Black No More. Photo by Marc J. Franklin, Courtesy Seven17 Public Relations

NEW YORK CITY Inspired by an Afro-futurist novel by George S. Schuyler, Black No More follows a young man during the Harlem Renaissance seeking out a scientist who claims to have created a solution to America’s race problem—a machine that will turn Black people white. Choreographer Bill T. Jones joins a wildly accomplished cast and crew to make moves for The New Group’s latest musical, which plans to officially open Feb. 8 at Pershing Square Signature Center for a limited initial run through Feb. 27. thenewgroup.org. —CE

Love Lifts Us Up

Zaccho Dance Theatre’s Helen Wicks at Grace Cathedral. Photo courtesy Zaccho Dance Theatre

SAN FRANCISCO Zaccho Dance Theatre’s Love, a state of grace features a half-dozen aerial artists performing in the cavernous interior of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. Performed in one-hour cycles, the work allows audience members to move through the space below at will, and to engage with a series of rituals and meditations, designed by artist-theologians Yohana Junkar and Claudío Cavalhaes. Directed and choreographed by Joanna Haigood, the performance installation encourages attendees to contemplate and celebrate our shared humanity, and the importance love holds across various spiritual practices. Feb. 11–12, 17–18. zaccho.org. —CE

Swan of a Different Feather

Miami City Ballet’s Katia Carranza and Carlos Quenedit rehearsing Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake. Photo by Alexander Iziliaev, Courtesy MCB

MIAMI With the North American premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake, Miami City Ballet unveils artistry previously lost in time. Ratmansky dug into Stepanov notation of the 1895 Petipa–Ivanov choreography and other sources, coming up with a ballet both truer to its roots and revelatory. Dance and mime, costumes and coiffure, honor the first Mariinsky Theatre production, but this brings surprises: Odette gains a more human presence, and Odile discards the Black Swan label, nary a feather on her knee-length, multitoned tutu. After debuting it in Miami, Feb. 11–13, MCB takes the work to West Palm Beach, Feb. 19–20, and Ft. Lauderdale, Feb. 26–27. miamicityballet.org. —Guillermo Perez

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30 Over 30: Dance Pros Who Prove Success Can Happen at Any Age

Dance Magazine — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 19:36:45 +0000

Maybe even more than most industries, the dance field is obsessed with youth. We fawn over prodigies, we love to predict the next big thing. Yes, Dance Magazine itself is 100 percent guilty of this, with features like “25 to Watch” and On the Rise. But just because a performing career can be short doesn’t mean that it has to be, or that someone doesn’t have anything to offer the dance world if they haven’t done it by their 20s. So we decided to put a twist on the traditional power list and highlight 30 over 30 who’ve had incredible breakthroughs, or seen career renaissances, or come into their own in new chapters of their careers after age 29. Their success today is built on the foundations they laid down, the experience they gained, the work they put in as they soaked up the lessons along the way.

From Chorus Girl to Leading Lady: Angie Schworer

Jayme Thornton

It’s the classic story—a chorus girl steps in for a star and becomes an instant leading lady. But for Angie Schworer, who starred in The Prom after 27 years on Broadway, it wasn’t quite that simple. Sure, it was a dream come true, especially since she was playing a veteran ensemble dancer named Angie waiting for a long-overdue break. But Schworer’s big moment had come 16 years earlier, when, after 16 months dancing in the ensemble and understudying Ulla in the 2001 phenomenon The Producers, she did the role in the first national tour, and then, already into her 30s, played the Scandinavian sexpot on Broadway for the musical’s last four years.

“Had I been that person saying ‘I only do roles now,’ I would have missed out on probably five more shows,” she says. Instead, she went back into the chorus—when Susan Stroman asked if she’d be a replacement in the Young Frankenstein ensemble, she said, “S-u-u-u-re. If my body can do it, I’ll do it.”

Tall and lanky, Schworer had been doing it since the age of 5, when she began classes at the Ziegler Studio of Dance in Covington, Kentucky. Her road to Broadway included theme parks and Atlantic City stage shows, and her showgirl chops—not to mention those showgirl legs—landed her an ensemble slot in The Will Rogers Follies in 1991. The body feels “creakier” now, but she credits Debbie Roshe’s jazz classes at Steps on Broadway, and regular swimming, for maintaining it. She didn’t warm up in her 20s—”I didn’t need to,” she says—but in The Prom she spent the whole intermission warming up for her big Fosse-style number. She imagines the young dancers in the company wondered why, going ” ‘Pffft—she’s barely doing anything.’ But I had to warm up to do it,” she says, “because you’re using your pelvis, you’re using your lower back.”

Much has changed over her three decades on Broadway, but one thing has stayed the same: “That joy and excitement of someone wanting you to be a part of their Broadway show.” —Sylviane Gold

Inviting More to Dance: Antoine Hunter

RJ Muna, Courtesy Hunter

“Dance saved my life,” says Antoine Hunter, who was sometimes made to feel alienated growing up Deaf in Oakland, California. But in his high-school dance class, “I realized that through dance, I could communicate.” Dance became a spiritual and artistic mission that led him to found Urban Jazz Dance Company in 2007 and the Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival in 2013.

Now in his mid-30s, Hunter is seeing his endeavors flourish in choreographic commissions; company tours to the UK, Turkey, Russia and Africa; speaking engagements at Harvard University, the Kennedy Center and APAP; and honors like a 2019 Dance/USA Fellowship. He has helped start international Deaf dance festivals as far afield as Turkey and Hong Kong. He’s even collaborated on an invention that allows dancers to feel music through their shoes. Most satisfying of all, he says, is “teaching people how to use dance to save their own life.” —Claudia Bauer

Finding Fresh Potential in Flamenco: Olga Pericet

Olga Pericet in Pisadas. Photo by Paco Villalta, Courtesy Pericet

Although she’d long been a key collaborator in other choreographers’ works, flamenco dancer Olga Pericet didn’t see her solo career take shape until her mid-30s. “I chose a difficult career path,” she says, “slower but surer.”

At 32 she won the Pilar López Dance Prize, which opened the door to present her first solo work, Rosa, Metal, Ceniza at the Jerez Festival, where she was awarded the Revelation Artist Award at age 35. Since then, Pericet has enjoyed a whirlwind of global engagements and yearly recognition, garnering top dance prizes such as the 2018 Spanish National Dance Award. Pericet masterfully recontextualizes flamenco’s past repertoire with humor, sensitivity and skill, fueled by her boundless imagination to challenge and meet our times head-on.

Now in her mid-40s, she says that with more maturity, “I am able to love every detail of my work and appreciate the people working alongside me, free of insecurities. I have confidence in myself because I know who I am as a creator and performer.” —Bridgit Lujan

He’s Not Done: Miguel Gutierrez

Miguel Gutierrez in This Bridge Called My Ass. Photo by Ian Douglas, Courtesy Gutierrez

Ever since his 2005 Retrospective Exhibitionist/Difficult Bodies earned him critical acclaim and his first big tour, Miguel Gutierrez has been a darling of the downtown New York City dance scene. But that designation doesn’t always come with the typical trappings of success (read: broad recognition and money). For Gutierrez, those came five years later, when at ages 38 and 39, he won a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, a United States Artists Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. (He used much of the funding to pay off credit card debt and five years of owed taxes.) His name has since become synonymous with making it big as an experimental artist, as he continues to create and tour and rake in awards—including four Bessies.

“Don’t forget about us middle-aged artists,” he says. “There’s such an emphasis on youth. Artists get to a certain spot and it feels like the field turns on them. Why should I feel like I have to clamor for relevance at this age? There’s this sense of dismissal, of ‘Oh, you had this experience and you’re done.’ I am not done.” —Lauren Wingenroth

Questioning, Yet Assured: Leslie Cuyjet

Leslie Cuyjet in A Salient Theme. Photo by Scott Shaw, Courtesy Cuyjet

Though Leslie Cuyjet has built a career out of dancing for seemingly everyone in the experimental New York dance scene—she won a Bessie Award in 2019 for her work with Jane Comfort, Juliana F. May, Niall Jones, Cynthia Oliver and Will Rawls—it’s only in the last four years that she’s felt her own choreographic career blossom.

Cuyjet considers her 2017–18 stint as a Movement Research artist in residence, begun when she was 36, as transformative. “I’d been getting little things independently, here and there,” she says, “but this was the first time an organization said, ‘We support you as an artist, and we’ll give you the resources you need.’ ” Having the space to mine questions of identity and what it means to be a Black woman—both hallmarks of her assured, character-driven work—gave her permission to fail, to experiment, to listen.

When the pandemic struck, Cuyjet, like many other artists, watched as opportunities dried up. “Everybody was faced with what artists have been facing all the time,” she says, “which is: You make something out of nothing.” She ended up creating virtual works for the EstroGenius Festival and The Kitchen. Now, The Kitchen is bringing her previously canceled show back, and she is working on a new piece for The Shed. —Rachel Rizzuto

From Dancer to Activist: Theresa Ruth Howard

Saya Hishikawa, Courtesy Howard

After retiring from a successful career dancing with Dance Theatre of Harlem and Armitage Gone! Dance, and guesting with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Theresa Ruth Howard came into her own as an activist. It started in 2015 when she wrote a viral blog post calling for information on Black ballerinas who came before Misty Copeland. The outpouring of data organically evolved into Howard’s Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet (MoBBallet.org), which includes a “roll call” of more than 560 Black ballet dancers. Today, at 50, Howard is an in-demand diversity strategist for ballet companies dealing with issues like colorism, implicit bias and systemic racism.

She encourages dancers today to “broaden their aperture,” she says. “Your value does not hinge on a tendu; your intellect is as important as your développé.” —Nancy Wozny

Lifelong and Steady: Ryan Heffington

Courtesy Heffington

Choreography titan Ryan Heffington describes his success in the dance industry as a slow burn. When he began creating work in his mid-20s, he was embraced only by the art world. His major breakthrough didn’t come until he hit 40 and landed Sia’s “Chandelier” music video—which instantly went viral. “I’m quite thankful that happened when it did,” he says. “I felt like I put in the work and laid the foundation for this success. Now, I’m looking forward to a lifelong and steady relationship with dance.”

So far that steady relationship looks more like a passionate romance. As one of the most in-demand choreographers in Hollywood, his resumé includes two Grammy nominations; feature films, like Baby Driver; Netflix’s “The OA”; commercials for Target, Nike and Under Armour; and collaborations with Paul McCartney, Lorde, Florence + the Machine and Arcade Fire. Still, he admits to moments of doubt: “The voice that says, ‘Will I ever work again?’ is still there when I have a few months of downtime.”

One of the biggest things he’s learned with experience? The power of cultivating his own voice. “When I was younger, ‘doing me’ meant being more of an outcast,” he says. “My friends and I were more punk—creatives who gained inspiration from clubs, rock music, fashion and partying. We didn’t need money, just an outlet. Eventually, I started working more because my work was unique. Directors and clients now want ‘Heffington’ instead of re-creating something that has been done before.” —Haley Hilton

In It for the Long Haul: Pam Tanowitz

Pam Tanowitz in rehearsal at NYCB. Photo by Erin Baiano, Courtesy Tanowitz

Pam Tanowitz keeps a folder full of her rejection letters. “A thick folder,” she says. Although she began choreographing during her junior year at Ohio State University, she didn’t receive a single grant until age 40. For about 15 years, she held a day job as the studio manager at New York City Center so she could have a steady income and access to studio space while making just one new work per year. “A choreographer came to rent space once and was like, ‘Did you know there’s a choreographer with your same exact name?’ ” Tanowitz says, laughing.

Then, just before she turned 50, her intricate, technique-driven works were suddenly in demand. In 2019 alone, she got commissions from New York City Ballet and The Royal Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company and Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, and booked an international tour with her eponymous company. “Looking back, not being noticed for 15 years was a gift,” she says. “Once I realized my career path would not be that of the hot, young choreographer, I just blocked out the noise of who was getting what, and focused on making good dances.” —Jennifer Stahl

Expanding Across Borders: Rosy Simas

Rosy Simas performs Skin(s) Uche Iroegbu, Courtesy Simas

Rosy Simas, 54, has lived, worked and danced in Minneapolis, Montreal, New York City and Santa Cruz, yet western New York state is also an area she considers home, as a Heron Clan Seneca within the six nations of the Haudenosaunee. Simas occasionally answers questions about place with stories of artist displacement: “When I was 30, I was living in Santa Cruz and running a dance studio I started. We ended up closing because of the dot-com boom that priced us out.” Later, she ended up in Montreal, drawn in by the city’s dance improvisation community. “There was no way for me to get grants, though people were generous about letting me teach and present my work,” she says.

Eighteen years passed between the sunset of her California studio and the incorporation of Rosy Simas Danse in Minnesota in 2017. In the meantime, she primarily worked as an independent choreographer and artist. In recent years, she’s focused specifically on building long-term relationships in the field, and expanding the mission of her organization beyond producing her own shows. “This is really the first time I’m doing it in a way where we’re directly supporting other artists,” she says. —Zachary Whittenburg

Arriving in One Leap: Abby Zbikowski

Abby Zbikowski teaching at Focus Records. Photo by Focus Films, Courtesy Festival Un Pas Vers l’Avant

Abby Zbikowski seemingly burst onto the contemporary dance scene in 2017 with abandoned playground, a work drenched in her signature style: aggressive, punishing somersaults and thwacked kicks that wouldn’t look out of place at a sports meet. It won her a Juried Bessie Award, and toured throughout the country. But Zbikowski had actually formed her company, Abby Z and the New Utility, five years earlier. This was just the first time people were paying attention.

Zbikowski, now 37, didn’t let that bother her. “For as many heartaches I might’ve felt at not being recognized at an earlier age, I think it helped me really create and hone this movement out of the public eye,” she says. “By the time people came to know my work, it was ripe—there had already been a lot of research, a lot of trial and error. And understanding.” —Rachel Rizzuto

Galvanizing Ballet: Jennifer Homans

NYU Photo Bureau: Hollenshead, Courtesy Homans

Little did Jennifer Homans know, in 2010, when she wrote the anguished words “I now feel sure that ballet is dying” at the end of her nearly 700-page ballet history Apollo’s Angels, what a galvanizing effect that sentence would have. Ever since, the matter has been discussed, rejected, invoked as gospel truth and used as a springboard for creation. Four years later, Homans channeled her energies into the founding of the Center for Ballet and the Arts, a think tank and artistic laboratory based at New York University that brings together writers, dancers, set designers, choreographers and scholars of all types to think, discuss and create.

Homans, 60, started out as a dancer with companies including Pacific Northwest Ballet. She retired at 26 following an injury. “When I stopped, I had a serious crisis of identity, and a couple of years of real depression,” she says. But after completing a PhD in modern European history, she found her way back to dance. “I reconciled writing and dancing through the study of history,” says Homans, who is now The New Yorker‘s dance critic. But all her activities and achievements have been driven by the same thing. “I just love dance,” she says. “It is a life force.” —Marina Harss

Never Too Late to Be a Principal: Stella Abrera

Quinn Wharton, Courtesy Kaatsbaan

It took Stella Abrera 14 years to rise from soloist to principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, at the age of 37. But nothing really changed on the day of her promotion. For years, she had been dancing with the grace and integrity of someone who puts in the work not for accolades but for its own sake. “I knew that I had a finite number of years to enjoy this enormous gift,” she says of her five years as a principal, “and I also knew that every single time I went out onstage, I was giving my absolute best.”

After retiring from performing in 2020, she seamlessly transitioned to her new role as artistic director at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, an institution in upstate New York devoted to dance instruction, creative residencies and performances. It was her idea to create an outdoor dance festival so that her fellow dancers, sidelined for months by the pandemic, could get back to what they loved best. Her approach to leading Kaatsbaan, she says, is similar to how she danced: “I feel like I was always a good worker, and I know how to work efficiently,” she says. “I’m learning to translate those processes, which I used as a dancer, to my new role.” —Marina Harss

Finding Freedom as a Freelancer: Bijayini Satpathy

Allan Mathew, Courtesy Satpathy

Bijayini Satpathy’s dancing encompasses all the qualities of great dance: musicality, incisiveness, focus and something larger, a kind of cosmic flow. For 25 years, as a member of Nrityagram and as the director of its unique training program—which she developed—Satpathy was one of the most distinguished dancers and pedagogues of the Indian classical dance form Odissi.

But, she says, in the last two years, since setting out as a soloist and choreographer at the age of 45, she has felt empowered to apply her research on expanding the limits of the Odissi language within her own work. “I see how my body moves,” she says, “and it tells me that I have a command of this language that I have studied and performed for so many years. I know the nuances of it, and yet I move in my own way. I’m writing my own story.” —Marina Harss

Exposing the Underrepresented: Raimund Hoghe

Raimund Hoghe (downstage left) in Si je meurs laissez le balcon ouvert. Photo by Rosa Frank, Courtesy Hoghe

Based in northwest Germany, Raimund Hoghe began his professional life as a journalist. His articles brought visibility to marginalized communities; recurring subjects included sex work and the human impact of the AIDS crisis. Though as a child he appeared in plays by Brecht and Shakespeare, he was in his 30s when he began working professionally in the performing arts, as a dramaturg for Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Only in his early 40s did Hoghe begin making his own dances, guided by advice he said came from the soprano Maria Callas: “Keep going in your own way, not with fireworks and not for easy applause, but with real feeling.”

In addition to creating and performing solos, Hoghe collaborated with artists such as Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula and Japanese dancer Takashi Ueno until his death in May, at age 72, just as the issue in which this feature originally appeared went to print. His lifelong sympathy for the underrepresented, whether on paper or onstage, stemmed in part from living with a congenital deformity of his spine he simply called a hunchback. He was always mindful about stepping into other people’s shoes and vice versa. “A solo for me is always more political than a solo for another dancer, because I can’t ask someone else to perform my political statement,” he said. —Zachary Whittenburg

The Dance Theater Whisperer: Annie-B Parson

Andrea Messana, Courtesy Parson

Choreographer Annie-B Parson co-founded Big Dance Theater in 1991, and she’s been making clever, inventive and critically acclaimed genre-pushing work since. But about a decade ago, when Parson was in her 50s, that work was introduced to a much larger audience through collaborations with an ever-growing list of performing arts celebrities, including David Byrne (for whom she recently choreographed a Broadway-concert-turned-Spike-Lee–directed HBO special), Mikhail Baryshnikov and St. Vincent.

“Forget about your career for a good long while, and get in the studio and choreograph,” Parson suggests. “Choreography is a lot like being a pianist—you have to sit down and do your scales every day. That could be taking a walk and looking at the compositional elements around you. It might mean I look at my kitchen table and restage the salt and pepper. It’s a practice that needs to be attended to daily.” —Lauren Wingenroth

Growing Humor, Sparkle and Grit: Monica Bill Barnes

Monica Bill Barnes performing with Hunter College dancers at Fall for Dance. Photo by Paula Lobo, Courtesy Monica Bill Barnes & Company

Though Monica Bill Barnes founded her troupe, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, in 1997 and has steadily choreographed and performed ever since, the past decade has brought with it attention on a much larger scale. Touring to more than 100 cities worldwide, Barnes and her close-knit team have collaborated with luminaries including radio host Ira Glass and illustrator Maira Kalman. In 2019, Barnes made the leap to the silver screen, choreographing Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.

In line with her company’s mission to “bring dance where it doesn’t belong,” Barnes approaches each project—whether it’s working out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or dancing to Neil Diamond at a luxury mall—with her trademark blend of humor and compassion, sparkle and grit.

“The day-in-and-day-out work that I did in my 20s was very similar to how I worked in my 30s and now my 40s,” says Barnes. “I think being in such a constant practice is the reason why I’ve really been able to understand myself as an artist.” —Chava Pearl Lansky

Making Life Into a Dance: Michelle Boulé

Audrey Hall, Courtesy Boulé

At 43, Michelle Boulé finds that one of the greatest gifts to come with age is clarity. “What really started to happen in my 30s is that I got clearer on who I am and what I want to do. I’m not living with this external notion of who I should be,” she says. “I’ve learned how to turn everything that seemed like a disappointment into an opportunity.”

Shortly after turning 30, she won a Bessie Award for her performance as James Dean in Last Meadow, a collaboration with Miguel Gutierrez. Since then, critics have hailed her as a “force of nature” in collaborations with Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, Doug Varone and Deborah Hay, among others. Meanwhile, her contemporary choreography has graced stages at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, and The Chocolate Factory, and toured internationally.

Today Boulé also channels the creativity, tenacity, compassion and collaborative spirit she’s gained from her illustrious dance career into work as a life coach. “I am harvesting the gifts that my 40-year practice in dancing has given me,” she says. “How can I help other people feel like their life is dance?” —Rachel Caldwell

Capturing the Moment: Nel Shelby

Christopher Duggan, Courtesy Shelby

A sturdy braid of dance, filmmaking and entrepreneurship runs through the center of Nel Shelby’s story, from training in ballet, jazz and tap during her Colorado childhood, to studying broadcast media at Stephens College in Missouri, to her arrival at Jacob’s Pillow as a videography intern. Nel Shelby Productions opened for business in 2004; four years later, she stopped teaching Pilates part-time to focus on her company and two kids.

Today Shelby manages 40-some concurrent projects, with help from up to a dozen employees and contractors. The pandemic-inspired shifts to virtual led to greater demand than ever before. Fall for Dance, Jacob’s Pillow and Vail Dance Festival are just three of her company’s nearly 100 clients.

With movement in her bones, she’s developed a unique approach to dance documentation that can capture the moment as well as communicate at the speed of contemporary culture. “Words like ‘archivist’ and ‘documentation’ can feel dry, so it’s taken me a while to see myself as an artist,” says Shelby, now 44. “I love being in my 40s and I love having been around the dance world for a while, realizing that we all did grow up together,” she says. —Zachary Whittenburg

An Eternal Evolution: Mia Michaels

Courtesy Michaels

Today, Mia Michaels is basically a household name. But she was mostly working unnoticed until she was 32, when she founded her company, RAW, in New York City. At age 35, she was creating work for Madonna, and two years later, she earned an Emmy nomination for her work on “Celine in Las Vegas: Opening Night Live.” What has followed is a nearly two-decade boom that includes three Emmy Awards for her work on “So You Think You Can Dance”; choreographing Broadway’s Finding Neverland; directing/choreographing the 2016 New York Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes; writing a memoir; and teaching dancers around the world. At 55, she is still embracing each new opportunity.

“The ebbs and flows of a long career are real and intense,” she admits. “Jobs come and go—I’ll experience long periods without work, followed by a stretch of being double-booked. So I set my life up as a master teacher. It brings in consistent money and keeps me in the studio. I’m always working on movement for class so I don’t get stale, stuck or afraid.” —Haley Hilton

Creating What Tap—and the U.S.—Is Calling For: Dormeshia

Jayme Thornton

When a New York Times headline in 2019 proclaimed Dormeshia the “Queen of Tap” and asked “Is Her Moment Now?”, the question seemed both rhetorical and prescient. Sure, she’d appeared in the star-studded Imagine Tap!, toured the international tap festival circuit and earned a 2014 Astaire Award for Outstanding Female Dancer in After Midnight—no doubt in recognition of the Fosse-like combination of highly technical dancing and unflappable grace for which she is known. But it’s her choreographic talent that’s garnered recent acclaim. In addition to co-creating The Blues Project with

Michelle Dorrance, Derick K. Grant and Toshi Reagon, in 2016 she debuted And Still You Must Swing, which enjoyed successful runs at Jacob’s Pillow and The Joyce Theater. A tribute to Black excellence and to tap’s cultural and musical roots, it was the show that the art form itself, and the country’s sociopolitical context, had been crying out for.

Her advice for those stuck in a rut? “When tap dancers aren’t working, they need to be shedding, listening to music, building their stamina and keeping their tools nice and sharp, so when the phone rings they’re ready to go,” says Dormeshia, 45. “Your actions in the ebb will determine the flow.” —Ryan P. Casey

The Chameleon: Sonya Tayeh

Jayme Thornton

Though she became a favorite choreographer on “So You Think You Can Dance,” Sonya Tayeh doesn’t think of the show as her breakthrough. Rather, it was a cross-country leap in her mid-30s, when she moved away from her West Coast commercial career for an unknown future in New York City, after getting hired to choreograph Signature Theatre’s Kung Fu, a play about Bruce Lee.

“To be an evolved artist involves taking big chances,” she says. In the years since, Tayeh’s kept opening doors with commissions from Jacob’s Pillow, Fall for Dance and the Martha Graham Dance Company. At 42, she earned her first Broadway credit with Moulin Rouge!, and in 2020, she snagged a Best Choreography Tony nomination for the show. Earlier this year, she choreographed a digital premiere for American Ballet Theatre.

Next up, her choreography for Sing Street is Broadway bound, and she’s working on a major motion picture. “I’ve never thought, I dream of this. I want to do this,” she says. “I have a dream of having a versatile, consistent career that holds true to my artistic integrity—whatever room I’m in.” —Madeline Schrock

Crafting Singular Projects: Gesel Mason

Joe Frantz, Courtesy Mason

Over the last two decades, Gesel Mason’s power as a kinetic storyteller has ramped up with a string of strikingly original projects, including her ongoing No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers. In this one-of-a-kind performance and web-based archive of prominent African-American choreographers’ works, Mason uses dance to explore both resilience and the ongoing history of silencing, erasure and appropriation. Last year, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant worth just under $100,000 to support the project.

Her most recent opus, Yes, And, poses the question, “Who would you be and what would you do (or make) if, as a Black woman, you had nothing to worry about?”

As an associate professor of dance at the University of Texas at Austin, Mason, 50, encourages her students to trust that their paths will be unique. “No one has the voice that you have,” she says. “Follow your heart, intuition and curiosity. Dancing is more than being onstage; it’s how you are in the world.” —Nancy Wozny

From Sports to Dance: Kris Lenzo

Kris Lenzo with Mei-Kuang Chen in Insomnia, Photo by Sarah Najera Tanya Schmidt, Courtesy Lenzo

Until 2003, Kris Lenzo says he only danced “once or twice a year at a party.” More an athlete, Lenzo swam and played basketball, football and softball growing up. He followed his brother into long-distance cycling, completing his first thousand-mile ride at age 16. After a work accident three years later, both of Lenzo’s legs were amputated. Within months of his recovery he was practicing with the Detroit Sparks, then a highly ranked wheelchair basketball team, and shortly after that he began wheelchair racing.

Around 2002, he asked for accessibility improvements at his daughter’s Oak Park, Illinois, preschool, also home to the Academy of Movement and Music and the dance company MOMENTA. To celebrate the completion of the building’s retrofit, Lenzo made his debut as part of a physically integrated cast that included disability dance advocate Ginger Lane. Since then, Lenzo has performed 34 works by 18 choreographers and participated in workshops with AXIS Dance Company. “I was 43 when I started performing. Most dancers are at the tail end at that point, if not finished,” says Lenzo, now 61. “I’m really grateful for it. Dance has brought me a lot of joy.” —Zachary Whittenburg

With the Diligence of a Dramaturg: Melanie George

JD Urban, Courtesy George

On the surface, it may seem like Melanie George suddenly arrived in 2020. The founder of Jazz Is… Dance Project (dedicated to raising the visibility of jazz and its roots), she’s a new associate curator at Jacob’s Pillow, an in-demand teacher, a speaker and a facilitator for digital events at such venues as Jacob’s Pillow, SummerStage NYC, the Guggenheim and more.

But according to George, 48, her rise to national prominence was a result of “strategy, diligence, hustle and determination.” She attributes her current career momentum to a confluence of events, including her former job as the full-time dance dramaturg at Lumberyard in Catskill, New York, from 2016–20 and her (spectacular) contribution to the 2020 documentary Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance.

“You will have a lot of careers in dance, so have multiple visions for your life,” she tells younger artists. “If you want it, do the work.” —Nancy Wozny

Intercontinental Storyteller: Cathy Marston

Cathy Marston at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. Photo by Sasha Onyshchenko, Courtesy Marston

Drawn to telling stories and bringing literature to life onstage, Cathy Marston gleans inspiration from everything from Greek mythology to Ibsen to Nabokov. She created her first piece, for The Royal Ballet’s UK tour, while still dancing and barely in her 20s, and has worked continuously across Europe since, including stints as associate artist at The Royal Opera House and director of Bern Ballett.

In 2018, Marston entered a new chapter of her career, making a name for herself in the U.S. A San Francisco Ballet commission was followed by the American debut of her full-length Jane Eyre by American Ballet Theatre. Marston’s newest ballets, Mrs. Robinson for SFB and Of Mice and Men for The Joffrey Ballet, will premiere next year. Now, she will become the next director of Ballet Zurich, starting summer 2023.

“Don’t feel that you need to have achieved x, y and z by the time you’re 25,” says Marston, now in her mid-40s. “I’m so glad that didn’t happen to me. You need to allow yourself time to explore and slowly digest the things that you discover, and distill your own voice.” —Chava Pearl Lansky

Still a Muse: Jodi Melnick

Paula Court, Courtesy Melnick

From the minute she graduated SUNY Purchase, Jodi Melnick got a string of gigs with postmodern choreographers. Her stylish, nuanced dancing turned heads. She enjoyed being a catalyst to help choreographers realize their vision. Melnick remembers a moment when, working quietly one-on-one with the legendary Sara Rudner, “I understood something physically, philosophically, mentally, cerebrally, enzymically, molecularly that became mine in my body that allowed me to step into her essence—like capturing what light is,” she says. She’s also served as muse for Trisha Brown, Vicky Shick, Twyla Tharp and Susan Rethorst.

Melnick didn’t choreograph in earnest until 20 years ago, when she was 37. Now she is sought after by some of New York City’s starriest dancers. Sara Mearns, Taylor Stanley and Lloyd Knight, among others, want to soak up her mind–body process, and she’s been working collaboratively with Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. Melnick, who teaches at Barnard College and Sarah Lawrence College, has not left her muse identity behind. “I’m proud to be called a dancer,” she says. —Wendy Perron

Multidisciplinary Late Starter: Onye Ozuzu

Onye Ozuzu and Qudus Onikeku improvise as part of danceGATHERING in Lagos. Photo by Jovan Landry, Courtesy Ozuzu

Growing up, Onye Ozuzu would dance in the living room with her father, a behavioral psychologist and Nigerian civil war survivor who loved music. She also remembers hearing him say, ” ‘You have a chance to get an education that can guarantee income. Don’t throw that away on dance lessons,’ ” she says. “My dad did give us tennis lessons. ‘If you’re that much of a talent at something physical, you’ll be able to win Wimbledon.’ “

Free to choose her own classes at Florida State University, Ozuzu caught up in dance quickly thanks to Darrell Jones and Trebien Pollard, her castmates in works by Nia Love, then a graduate student. “I didn’t decide I was going to be a dancer until I was 20,” she says. “I was majoring in English literature and economics and setting myself up to become a lawyer.” Ozuzu, now 50, has been active in academia ever since, in leadership at Columbia College Chicago and the University of Colorado Boulder prior to her current role as dean at the University of Florida College of the Arts. All the while, she’s advanced her multidisciplinary creative career, convening collaborators from practices as diverse as urban farming and woodworking.

“I don’t think of myself as a ‘late bloomer’ so much as I was a late starter, so I focused on influences like Les Ballets Africains, where it’s very clearly women in their 40s dancing the lead roles,” says Ozuzu. “Those images helped reorient me.” —Zachary Whittenburg

Raising Latina, Chicana and Indigenous Voices: Vanessa Sanchez

Kelly Whalen, Courtesy KQED Arts

Shortly before turning 30, Vanessa Sanchez founded her San Francisco–based ensemble, La Mezcla, as a platform for the voices of Latina, Chicana and Indigenous women and youth. In 2019, the Chicana-Native percussive artist—whose main forms include tap, traditional Mexican Zapateado Jarocho, and Afro-Caribbean traditions from Brazil and Cuba—won both a Dance/USA Artist fellowship and an Isadora Duncan Award.

But her national profile skyrocketed the following year when the Bay Area public media outlet KQED highlighted the company in its “If Cities Could Dance” series, with excerpts of Pachuquísmo, Sanchez’s signature work chronicling women of the 1940’s Zoot Suit era. Since then, the gigs keep coming, including livestreams from The Joyce Theater and Lincoln Center’s virtual #ConcertsForKids. Most recently, a 2020 Hewlett 50 Arts Commission grant helped fund her new work, Ghostly Labor, which explores the exploitation of female labor in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Her advice? “Learn, research and train with the long game in mind,” says Sanchez, 36. “Never let society tell you how to express yourself. Never stop being a student.” —Nancy Wozny

Never Not Expanding: Camille A. Brown

Whitney Browne, Courtesy LSG Public Relations

Camille A. Brown’s career is like its own universe, steadily expanding. A year after joining Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, she began choreographing for an ever-growing list of companies and, in 2006, she started her own. Ten years ago, she branched out into theater and opera. Mainstream recognition came with her choreography for Broadway’s Once On This Island, and recently she’s also picked up film credits.

It may seem like a swift progression, but “to me,” says Brown, “it was a 20-year climb.” Now 41, she’s about to become the Metropolitan Opera’s first Black director to create a main-stage production, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and is slated to be the first Black woman to direct and choreograph on Broadway, with the revival of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

“People don’t see defeat; they just see the successes,” she says. “The same day that Once On This Island was announced, I got a call from another theater saying they weren’t going to move forward with me on a show because I didn’t have enough musical experience. In the ‘nos,’ I go through my hurt, but then I have to look ahead and see ‘Well, what opportunity does this provide?’ Because you’re released to do something else.” —Madeline Schrock

Creating With a Reason: Kenny Ortega

Kenny Ortega (right) on set. Photo by Kailey Schwerman, Courtesy Netflix

Kenny Ortega attributes much of his career to a night in his mid-20s spent on the dance floor of a club in San Francisco, where he was discovered by the art-punk band The Tubes. The group invited him to choreograph their shows for the next 10 years, and his work caught the eye of artists like Madonna, Cher, Bette Midler and The Pointer Sisters. In his mid-30s, Ortega capitalized on these connections with seemingly endless national and world tours. He booked the 1980 roller-skating movie Xanadu, where Gene Kelly mentored him in creating movement for the screen. That’s where he found his sweet spot, choreographing some of the most iconic dance movie scenes of all time: the “Twist and Shout” sequence from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; “Try a Little Tenderness,” from Pretty in Pink; and “The Time of My Life,” from Dirty Dancing. He’s choreographed for Michael Jackson, the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the Academy Awards. He directed a 2006 Disney TV movie which would eventually become the mammoth High School Musical franchise. In 2019, at 69 years old, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“The first night I had dinner with Gene Kelly, he asked me, ‘What is your raison d’être?’—my reason for being,” Ortega remembers. “I had to think about it really hard and long. From then on, I made sure there was something significant about opportunities that made them worth getting up every day and putting my all in. With that came the success.” —Haley Hilton

The post 30 Over 30: Dance Pros Who Prove Success Can Happen at Any Age appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Cathy Marston Talks Literary Adaptations, Dream Projects and Dance Criticism

Zachary Whittenburg — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 23:00:00 +0000

Prolific director-choreographer Cathy Marston has made story ballets chic again. Last year began with Marston poised to make a big splash in the U.S., with plans for new creations at The Joffrey Ballet (Of Mice and Men) and San Francisco Ballet (Mrs. Robinson, based on The Graduate), following up remounts at American Ballet Theatre and The Joffrey of her Jane Eyre. With both premieres delayed by the pandemic—even SFB’s planned digital debut of Mrs. Robinson this month has been replaced by a webcast of her 2018 Snowblind—Marston continues to work remotely and even started a project-based company in partnership with choreographer Ihsan Rustem.

Where are you right now?

I’ve been at home in Bern, Switzerland, since March 2020. Which is just mad. I’ve never stayed put for so long.

I understand your parents were English teachers, which explains a lot. I know less about your pathway to dance.

I loved this police series on the telly called “Juliet Bravo.” I wanted to be like her, a female inspector. My mum told me she was really an actress, but I couldn’t find any drama classes, so Mum said, “Why don’t you do dance?”

Is it plot that sparks your imagination, or can descriptions and turns of phrase seed ideas too?

Probably the first things I’m looking at are character and plot. With Mrs. Robinson, it was the character of Mrs. Robinson, and then the plot worked in that it could all be told through dance. The other thing that draws me to stories has got more to do with language specifically. In the case of Ethan Frome, it was the snow itself and the way that environment lends an emotional atmosphere.

Cathy Marston

Rick Guest, Courtesy SFB

I understand Anthony Dowell encouraged your choreography. What have you learned from performers like Dowell, who bring such life to characters onstage?

At The Royal Ballet, they do have some fantastic dancer-actors. I was so proud, actually, creating The Cellist. There were four parts for what they call the “principal character artists,” and, now that we’re all getting a bit older, three of those parts went to colleagues and peers of mine from school. They could get every little gesture, every turn of the head, to come to life with the most subtle detail.

Working with [SFB principal] Sarah Van Patten is very similar, actually. In Mrs. Robinson, she would just reach to Benjamin [the titular graduate] and pick a tiny bit of lint off his shirt. It says everything. I love that.

That suggests it’s also about knowing when to stop choreographing, to leave room for spontaneity.

It’s also about how the process is. You have to give dancers space to know they can contribute in that way.

George Balanchine famously said, “There are no mothers-in-law in ballet.” I expect you might disagree.

No, he’s right. [Laughs.] There are limits.

Is there a “white whale” for you, a story you absolutely love but don’t quite know how to tell onstage?

There’s a piece I’d love to do but don’t know if it’s ever going to happen, and that’s Atonement, by Ian McEwan. He’s told me I can do it, I just need to find the company.

Dance and language also intersect in criticism.
The New York Times
published a strong response to Jane Eyre by Gia Kourlas. What strategies have you developed to support the press in its assessment of your work?

The New York Times
review is actually the only review I’ve knowingly not read. It was a huge thing, ABT premiering Jane Eyre at the Met. I had two very close friends there and they both told me, “Don’t read it.” I mean, I got the gist—it sounded awful. When you read reviews, a turn of phrase can linger and leave a bitter taste in the mouth, even if you disagree.

I’d love to make works that people love straightaway, of course, but I’d hate to make works that people love the first time, and the second time are really bored by. I want people to want to watch it again and see more in it. So, I guess with American critics—and maybe with Gia—it’s a getting-to-know-you phase, and we just need to have a chat at some point. [Laughs.] Or maybe not. You can never please everybody.

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Cathy Marston in “DRIFT”

Dance Magazine — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

One of the unexpected benefits of 2020 has been seeing how our favorite dance artists have found new ways to express themselves. In this short film, “DRIFT,” beloved narrative ballet choreographer Cathy Marston puts on her (barefoot) dancing shoes for the first time in about 15 years. In an email she sent out last weekend, she wrote:

“It’s been a year that none of us imagined. Despite enormous challenges there have been some serendipitous moments of joy and inspiration that perhaps would not have found space for themselves in the rush of ‘normal life.’ As the year draws to a close I wanted to share one of these moments with you all: a day when I got fed up of the news, of reading emails about the next postponed project, and indeed of just ‘waiting.’ I called some friends, and we made this—’DRIFT’—filmed 10 minutes from my home on the banks of the River Aare in Bern, Switzerland. I’ve not performed in about 15 years, so the fact I’m here ‘dancing’ illustrates how much I needed to be creative again!”

“DRIFT” is directed and edited by Felix von Muralt, with music composed for the film by Philip Feeney and performed by violinist Sara Trickey with Feeney on the piano. Marston’s costume is by Bernese designers, Viento.

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2020–21 Season Preview: The In-the-Works Shows We're Looking Forward to Most

Dance Magazine — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 23:00:00 +0000

With how rapidly the performance landscape has shifted—and continues to shift—as the world grapples with COVID-19, looking ahead can feel fraught. Many artists, organizations and presenters remain in holding patterns. Nevertheless, we wanted to celebrate the projects that have been announced that excite us, even if their details (in particular, their planned performance dates) are even more subject to change than ever before. These in-the-works shows are what we’re looking forward to whenever and however we can congregate to watch dance again.

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

Gibney Company co-directors Nigel Campbell and Amy Miller will lead a Bridge Project workshop.

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

Everett Saunders and Marjani Forté-Saunders

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

Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman at the 2014 Tony Awards

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

Danielle Georgiou

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

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s Grace Rookstool and Corey Bourbonniere

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

Tony Yazbeck and Emily Pynenburg rehearse with Michelle Dorrance and Melinda Sullivan.

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 post 2020–21 Season Preview: The In-the-Works Shows We're Looking Forward to Most appeared first on Dance Magazine.

5 Perspective-Shifting Shows We're Looking Forward to This Month

Courtney Escoyne — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Feminist takes on The Graduate and The Godfather, international collaborations and a whole lot of flamenco. The shows we’re most excited to see this March are all about unexpected takes on familiar ideas.

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

Hugo Glendinning, Courtesy Sadler’s Wells

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

Rocío Molina in her Caída del Cielo

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.

The post 5 Perspective-Shifting Shows We're Looking Forward to This Month appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Love It or Hate It, Our Editors Discuss All Things Jane Eyre

Dance Magazine — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:00:00 +0000

Story ballets that debut during American Ballet Theatre’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House are always the subject of much curiosity—and, sometimes, much debate. Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre was no different. The ballet follows the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brönte’s novel as she grows from a willful orphan to a self-possessed governess, charting her romance with the haughty Mr. Rochester and the social forces that threaten to tear them apart.

While the ballet was warmly received in the UK when Northern Ballet premiered it in 2016, its reception from New York City–based critics has been far less welcoming. A group of editors from Dance Magazine and two of our sister publications, Dance Spirit and Pointe, sat down to discuss our own reactions.

Opening salvo: Did we like it?

Courtney Escoyne,
Dance Magazine: Let’s start with the most basic of questions: Did you enjoy watching Jane Eyre? I, for one, really loved it—but then, I’m a huge fan of the storytelling British ballet is steeped in.

Margaret Fuhrer,
Dance Spirit: I mean, I really wanted to. You have to root for this production, right?

Lauren Wingenroth,
Dance Magazine: Yes, I did, if only for the sense of curiosity that kept me wondering how Marston was going to handle this beast of a story.

Madeline Schrock,
Dance Magazine: I agree with Lauren. I was curious to learn more about Marston’s storytelling abilities. And how her choreography would translate to ABT. Overall, I enjoyed it.

Amy Brandt,
Pointe: I did enjoy it. It’s a dark ballet, and I knew that going in, so I wasn’t expecting flashy steps or colorful costumes. It did feel very heavy at times. But what I appreciated was the strong characterizations that unfolded throughout the ballet.

Chava Lansky,
Pointe: I did, though it’s certainly not cheerful, which is fitting to the story. I think New York critics expect ABT story ballets to be centered on the dancing, which this ballet isn’t. It’s telling a story, which happens to incredibly dark and dreary.

LW:
Yes, they kept saying “dark and dreary“ as if those are inherently bad qualities in a ballet! I don’t see why ballet can’t tell dreary stories, and tell them well. Not saying this was a prime example of that, but I don’t really buy that criticism of the ballet.

MF:
I’m sorry, I just couldn’t get into it. [imitating Billie Eilish] I’m the bad guy.

CE:
What was it that you found holding you back, Margaret?

MF:
Here’s my bigger-picture take on story ballets: I feel like they either need to be telling a tale that was written to be told onstage, or they need to have a fantastic score. Otherwise, it’s such an uphill battle. I wasn’t put off by the darkness of the ballet. And I did appreciate the gestural specificity of each character—Marston really captured their personalities in distinct, immediately recognizable ways. But was there even one hard stop in that mush of a score for the whole first act?

LW:
Mushy is a good word for it!

CL:
I didn’t always mind the score, I think the relentlessness reflects the atmosphere. We are in Jane’s memories and mind, after all.

CE:
I know I’ve heard some criticism to the effect that the choreography was just nonstop movement—do we think that may have been an effect of the score?

MF: Yes! 100 percent.

On Marston’s use of gesture

MF:
And great as the gestural stuff was early on, when we were establishing characters, she hammered it and hammered it and hammered it.

LW:
Regarding the gestural movement, Luke Jennings compared it to Mats Ek which made a lot of sense to me. And is probably why I didn’t like it, as I’m not a big Mats Ek fan.

AB:
I felt like I was watching conversations unfold. It wasn’t the usual “I,” “you,” point-to-finger pantomime you always see in ballet. You could see Jane and Rochester’s relationship unfold in a clear way that didn’t feel rushed.

MS:
But do you think for a story like Jane Eyre that the gestural work might be more necessary for an audience who may not be familiar with all the characters? It can feel a bit like she’s holding our hands to make sure we’re on the same page.

CE:
Also, gestural work at ABT during the spring season? At least this wasn’t the millionth repetition of Petipa-era mime.

MS: Agreed, Courtney!

What if the ballet were made for ABT?

MF: So, I kept thinking about what this ballet would’ve looked like if she’d made it for ABT at the Metropolitan Opera House.

LW:
Less plot happening way upstage, I’d hope?

MF:
The scale felt too small. The vocabulary felt too simple for these incredible dancers.

CL:
Margaret, I think that’s where a lot of the frustration with it comes from, that it wasn’t showcasing what the dancers can do. But I think ultimately it just wasn’t the right piece for ABT—whereas it might be received much better at The Joffrey.

LW:
I wonder if it was a blessing in disguise that it wasn’t quite a fit; exposing the dancers to a style of storytelling they’d never otherwise have a chance to try.

CE:
I think that was one of the ballet’s strengths, actually! It would have been a lot more posturing and grand entrances had it been made for ABT. Limitations foster creativity, as composition teachers at my alma mater are fond of saying.

CL:
Yes, Courtney, and Cathy Marston said that as well in regards to her use of minimal sets and props. I think decisions were ultimately made due to budget, but ended up forcing the story to be told through the movement.

LW:
Sometimes I just didn’t understood what the props they were using were.

AB: I was happy to see something different. They took a risk.

MF:
I did think the dancers did absolutely everything they could with it.

CE:
I appreciated that Marston developed a vocabulary that was specific to each character. It’s the MacMillan school of character-building—everything you need to know about them is in the movement.

AB:
Me too, Courtney.

CL:
Me too. And I become so frustrated in story ballets when we leave the plot behind for endless divertissements and wedding dances, it really takes me out of the story. Whereas I found myself really engaged in deciphering what was going on the whole time.

MS:
Yes, Chava. There was little extraneous choreography, except for some passages toward the end, in my opinion.

AB:
I felt like every movement had a meaning. It wasn’t empty dancing or gestures. I enjoyed tying to figure out what each character was trying to say.

CL:
Yes. And I liked particularly how that translated to conversations between Jane and Rochester. I think a really strong example is when Jane imitates Blanche’s movement—we totally get what she’s saying by her movement reference, and it got a laugh from the audience.

MF: [Laughs] I did love that Jane got the laugh of the night with that!

MF: The gestures weren’t empty, but didn’t you feel each one was overused?

AB:
The repetition didn’t bother me at all…and I saw it three times.

CL:
I agree with Amy—I read more into the gestures each time.

MF:
If I ever see another phallic Rochester leg…

LW:
I was wondering if that was just me. But Gia Kourlas saw it too…

CE:
It’s interesting to me how completely differently that was taken in the U.S., Margaret! Judith Mackrell seemed to love it.

CL:
Marina Harss just seemed confused by the leg, which I kind of agree with.

LW:
I really like what Judith had to say, especially the idea of cutting St. John Rivers and making Bertha less literal. I just wish the steps themselves weren’t quite so cliché. The pushing, the head-grasping. I’m all for characters having a signature, but I just didn’t like those.

AB:
True, I wasn’t always jazzed about some of the partnering choreography. It was too yank-y and manipulative at times.

Devon Tesucher as Jane and James Whiteside as Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre.

Gene Schiavone, Courtesy ABT

On the principal casts

CL: I think the depiction of Rochester was sort of vague throughout—the ballet makes him so playful and arrogant, when in the book he’s far more introspective and tortured.

LW:
Yes, the way she had Rochester enter didn’t paint him as introspective at all. Quite the opposite.

MS:
But that can be difficult to successfully show through movement. Perhaps that interpretation shift was intentional?

CE:
Did you find that to be true across the casts that you saw, Chava?

CL:
I found that Cory Stearns was the strongest Rochester.

MF:
I kept wishing they’d cast Cory opposite Devon Teuscher.

CL:
I do think that Cory/Devon would have been the strongest cast. James Whiteside definitely played it very haughty, though I think that he did the ending section in the most heartbreaking way. His melodramatic style really served him well there.

MF:
James is wonderful and a man of many talents, but he’s not great at creating an erotic charge with his partners, and that’s so central to the Jane–Rochester relationship.

CE:
I actually really loved James and Devon as a couple, which was not something I ever thought would happen. The sexual tension in that first act pas…

MF:
Oh, fascinating! You thought James and Devon had sexual tension?

CL:
I really didn’t feel that, Courtney. I felt there was a real lack of tension and chemistry between James and Devon.

CE:
Maybe I was just reacting to the choreography, but it got me. I appreciated that Marston found a way to show both what was really happening and what was happening inside their heads.

Isabella Boylston as Jane and Thomas Forster as Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre

Gene Schiavone, Courtesy ABT

LW: I didn’t really feel it between Thomas Forster and Isabella Boylston either.

MF:
Despite their absolute best efforts—you could tell they were giving it everything they had.

AB:
I thought Thomas Forster was excellent as Rochester. He showed a lot of range as an actor. I hope to see more of him in leading roles.

MF
: I’d like to see Thomas do more generally. He seems chronically underused.

CE:
Can we turn this into a Thomas Forster appreciation post instead?

LW:
What about Misty Copeland and Cory?

CL:
The relationship between Misty and Cory was nice, but I don’t think that the role was right for Misty. She played it as sort of beautiful and sad, but not tortured or self-conscious. Also, the relationship between Misty and Skylar Brandt as Young Jane wasn’t quite right. I think what made Devon and Catherine Hurlin so nice to watch is that Catherine is a really wild dancer, and Devon is really contained, so the growth makes sense. That didn’t exist with Skylar and Misty, where the descriptors are flipped.

MF:
Oh, Catherine was fantastic!

Misty Copeland as Jane and Cory Stearns as Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre

Gene Schiavone, Courtesy ABT

Dream casting for future runs

CE: Were there any dancers we would love to see tackle these roles who didn’t get a chance to?

AB:
Sarah Lane as Jane.

MS:
Another vote for Sarah Lane.

LW:
Christine Shevchenko?

CL:
Christine!

CE:
I think it’d be a challenge for Christine. I’d love to be surprised.

CL:
Katherine Williams?

LW:
David Hallberg as a super broody Rochester?

CE:
The broodiest!

MF:
I was so thinking that. Because it’s really an Onegin role! Give him a fake blond beard and let him run with it!

LW:
Yes! I was thinking about his Onegin interpretation the whole time. It’s so good.

AB:
I’d like to see Hallberg in this.

CE:
Roberto Bolle and those puppy dog eyes could be fascinating…too bad he’s leaving the company.

CL:
Calvin Royal III might have been interesting too. He was definitely the most engaging of the Headmasters.

MS:
Yes, Calvin was a standout.

CE:
He has been killing it this season!

MF:
Calvin is really figuring himself out as a dramatic actor, which is fantastic.

CL:
Sarah Lane was so fantastic as Mrs. Fairfax. I’m so impressed with what she did with what was probably not a super-desirable role.

AB:
Sarah did a wonderful job with that. All of those tics—it must have been hours and hours of rehearsal to get them just right.

CL:
Though Cassandra Trenary was great in that role as well.

LW:
It must have been an interesting experience for her, switching between Mrs. Fairfax and Bertha.

Cassandra Trenary (Bertha), James Whiteside (Mr. Rochester) and Devon Teuscher (Jane) in Jane Eyre.

Gene Schiavone, Courtesy ABT

The character we could’ve seen less of

CE:
There seems to have been a general sense that St. John Rivers could’ve been ditched as a character altogether—any thoughts on that?

LW:
Boy, bye. I was bored whenever he was onstage.

MF:
St. John is boring and terrible in the book.

CL:
Well, a ton of that plotline was left out.

MS:
Right. So much of it was truncated, especially the marriage proposal. Well, completely cut.

CL:
I think she watered him down too much.

CE:
Necessary, don’t you think?

MS:
I didn’t miss it.

AB:
But don’t we need St. John Rivers to see her change of heart? What else would they stick in there?

CE:
He did serve as a useful framing device.

CL:
Yes. And to show yet another relationship to men.

MF:
Yeah, he seems dramatically necessary but completely uninteresting as a character.

LW:
It might have been powerful to see her come to it on her own?

CL:
Then it’s not just that Rochester is the only man who’s nice to her, and that’s why she loves him.

CE: I mean, St. John is perfectly nice. That’s the problem.

On Marston’s multifaceted use of a male corps

MS: Speaking of men, can we talk about how Marston used that sea of men throughout? Did you find it effective or think they got in the way?

AB:
I got tired of the D-Men after a while. It felt a little relentless.

LW:
Getting in the way! I wanted Marston to trust the rest of the cast, specifically Jane, to be able to carry it without that unnecessary metaphor.

MF:
I understood the device. I think it’s smart. I did get tired of seeing Jane buffeted by dudes.

CL:
I think that they are effective, but that it was overkill. But they really served to make the ballet more feminist.

CE:
In what way, Chava?

CL:
In showing her lack of agency in the society she lived in, and the way that men controlled her life—literally carrying her from place to place. I think that it’s a really powerful image, even if they were sometimes too much. And there were moments where Marston used them really cleverly, like holding the candles in Thornfield, when they seemed like walls/staircases and moved Jane around.

CE:
I loved the use of them to convey a set that Northern Ballet probably just didn’t have the money to build.

MF:
Yes, that was rather beautiful.

AB:
I thought that was creative, too.

MS:
It gave a nice, overarching sense of her being haunted by these men, and that served how time jumps around throughout the ballet well.

LW:
Yes, I wish they were more haunting (read: subtle) and less in her face.

CL:
I also thought it was an interesting juxtaposition to how the D-Men interacted with the other characters—like as Rochester’s horse buddies, or with Blanche. More privileged characters didn’t have such a tortured relationship with them.

MS:
That’s interesting to note.

CE:
Is that a function of the narrative, or a purposeful double meaning?

Stella Abrera on Instagram: “Family Portrait: Jane Eyre ❤️👪💑🤪❤️🎉 Loved being part of @cathyrmarston’s beautiful production and watching @abtofficial dancers…”

Stella Abrera breaking bad

CE: Also, can we take a second to give a shoutout to Stella Abrera’s Blanche for being ridiculously fun?

MF:
Love it when Stella breaks bad.

MS:
She really ran with that role.

CL:
I really liked Christine Shevchenko’s version as well!

LW:
I feel like I totally missed all the moments people were talking about with Hee Seo. She didn’t seem so bad to me.

CE:
The strongest reaction on opening night was to Stella’s Blanche shoving little Zimmi Coker out of her way.

CL:
Mr. Rochester’s ward: Fun and a nice, frivolous break, or overdone?

MS:
The character felt exhausting to me. But it created such a strong contrast. Zimmi did an excellent job.

MF:
I found Zimmi endlessly irritating, which…mission accomplished, I guess?

CE:
I think her character is necessary. She’s adorable, but she also really serves to show how Jane has grown, and her quiet strength.

CL:
I think that those moments, like Blanche shoving Rochester’s ward, showed the strength of the ballet. People were really engaged enough to get the jokes.

CE:
Like when Jane imitates Mrs. Fairfax or Blanche at the end! I could hear the people around me getting it.

CL:
Which shows the audience is really paying attention.

LW:
I totally missed that.

CE:
Lauren, maybe you just saw the wrong cast!

The hotly debated ending

CE:
What do we think of the ending, particularly that last image of Jane stepping forward into the spotlight? The New York Times called it hokey, but The Guardian was all for it.

CL:
Love it! And apparently Marston got a lot of pushback for it at Northern Ballet, because it’s kind of rewriting the ending.

MF:
I liked it, although I do agree with Gia Kourlas that the pacing was off somehow in the final moment.

MS:
I was proud of Jane. But I personally had mixed feelings about it. Loved the lighting, though.

LW:
I liked it.

CL:
Reminding the audience that it’s Jane’s story.

AB:
Do we need reminding, though? That said, I didn’t mind the ending.

CL:
Amy, I think yes, because otherwise we’d think that she’s happy just because she’s married, rather than happy for having come into her own.

CE:
An admirable break from the “third act, let’s have a wedding and everything is marvelous because of it!” pattern, I thought.

CL:
Some did it better than others. Isabella just sort of seemed to be standing there and it didn’t work.

CE:
I think Devon played it beautifully, though Rochester crumpling behind her was rather distracting.

MS
: Ooh, I think you put your finger on it. Something felt a bit off to me.

MF:
Oh, did James crumple? I missed the crumpling.

CL:
I don’t really remember seeing what was behind her any of the three times—the lighting is pretty extreme there.

LW:
While we’re talking about the ending, why didn’t Jane get her own bow?!

CL:
I don’t know! I’m totally with you on that!

CE: She should have gotten to walk her own self out there.

James B Whiteside on Instagram: “JANE EYRE 📚 – Last night was the US premiere of @cathyrmarston’s ballet adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”. What an enormous…”

On the split opinions between American and British critics

LW: I’m curious for theories on the great New York versus UK criticism divide. Was it the setting? The dancers? The expectations?

CE:
New York critics are grumpy? [Laughs]

LW:
Or New York critics are just mean?

CL:
I think New York critics are primed by Alexei Ratmansky. This was the opposite of a sensory overload.

MF:
I think the Met was a very weird stage for this ballet, for starters.

AB:
It was meant for a much smaller stage, so that’s one thing. I also think the focus in Europe is much different. We’re used to a very Balanchine and/or Petipa diet, and contemporary choreography seems to have evolved a little differently over there.

CE:
I think that British critics are steeped in a much richer dramatic tradition than you find in New York. Ashton and MacMillan are the bedrock of dramatic ballet there—and both of those choreographers are big on making every movement, gesture and stillness a result of character.

AB:
But MacMillan and Ashton are from earlier eras. I think there was more cross-pollination back then.

CE:
They might be earlier era choreographers, but they’re in the air you breathe in London. I know Devon has talked about just how much meaning each movement Marston gave them had.

LW:
But do New York critics hate MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet? Because this feels like it lives in the same world.

MS:
I don’t think this is necessarily a 1:1 comparison.

CE:
Kenneth made that for a huge opera house, and he was creating a hugely populated world.

CL:
I think it doesn’t live in the same world, Lauren. Romeo and Juliet is so grand, and the music is massively dramatic. I think that’s the easiest comparison, but they’re just so different.

MF:
Agreed. MacMillan and Ashton tended to choose big, meaty scores.

CL:
Marston has said that using music from that era would make it too over-dramatic, which I think she was shying away from. The most drama filled moments, such as the fire, use original compositions.

LW:
I wonder if people would have liked it more had she gone in that direction instead. I think I would have—I’m a sucker for drama.

CL:
I like that it wasn’t dramatic. I just don’t think that’s what Brönte intended. I think it was more true to the story this way.

CE:
Jane Eyre is exceptionally internal—which is what a novel is meant to do!

American Ballet Theatre on Instagram: “Kissing Jane Eyre goodbye 💖 @mistyonpointe @cory_stearns @cathyrmarston”

What does the choreographer owe to the source material?

MF: What about Tudor? I feel like Marston has much more in common with him, or she’s trying to inhabit the same space.

CE:
Tudor is arguably even more dated than MacMillan, but he does have a similar preoccupation with psychology—having Jane and Rochester show what was happening in their heads as they shook hands in that first act pas was a very Tudor touch.

CL:
Or it’s a very Brönte touch! That is the story! It’s not a story of kings and queens or warring families. It’s one small, plain woman and what goes on in her head.

MF:
I think I personally tend to go for ballets that have a musical reason, first and foremost, to exist, and that’s why I struggle with works like this so much. But that’s my old-fashioned taste.

MS:
Interesting point. Which god should Marston serve? Brönte, or the pillars of British ballet?

CE:
I rather think she served both.

LW:
Neither?

MF:
Neither? [Laughs]

CL:
There’s so much criticism that she held too closely to the plot, but don’t you think people would have been upset if she hadn’t?

LW:
I think that’s a silly critique. She did simplify it quite a bit already.

AB:
Yes.

MS:
My point exactly. She’s faced a lot of comparison. Can we treat her as a unique voice?

Devon Teuscher on Instagram: “Jane and Rochester 🥰 Tonight and Saturday! Two more chances to see @jamesbwhiteside and I take on these dynamic characters in…”

Does ABT have the right audience for Jane Eyre?

MF:
I respect Marston so much for trying to do this. It seems like she’s coming from the right place in pretty much every respect.

CL:
Not to say that it was perfect, but I can’t really imagine a better Jane Eyre ballet. I think it’s a tall task.

MF:
Agreed! I just don’t think Jane Eyre is meant to be a ballet.

CE:
Frankly, a lot of male choreographers—looking at you, Ratmansky—have been given a lot more leeway with far less narratively successful full lengths that were way more expensive to produce.

CL:
Right! It’s crazy to me that people would prefer Harlequinade over this, which is so minimal in terms of plot, just so they could look at pretty costumes.

MF:
Oh, but they’re trying to do completely different things.

CE:
Beautiful dancing in Harlequinade, but it shouldn’t have cost what it did, and it should not be in two acts.

LW:
I would rather see choreographers tackling big stories that may not work rather than trite ones.

CL:
But I think that’s what ABT audiences expect when they come to the Met.

MF:
I don’t think anyone would argue that the plot was the point of Harlequinade or Whipped Cream, though. Aren’t they really abstract works camouflaged as story ballets? Big, grand excuses for dancing?

CL:
I agree that they shouldn’t be compared, but I think that in part, ballets like those are why Jane Eyre got such a harsh reaction.

MS:
Because it’s not meeting audience expectations?

CL:
Because it wasn’t about dancing.

LW:
I think it was about dancing, but not in the way we’ve been primed to think of it at ABT.

CE:
It wasn’t about flashy dancing. One of the primary critiques has actually been that there was too much movement, when what they were really saying is that there weren’t enough applause moments.

CL:
And that’s unusual for ABT. The story and characters were given more priority. But 32 fouettés wouldn’t have helped to illustrate the plot, even if they get the audience riled up.

MS: Unusual is one way to move forward.

Parting shots

MF:
I don’t think it’s bad for ABT to try different things, and I don’t think every story ballet should be a Ratmansky ballet. But I don’t think Jane Eyre was successful.

CE:
I’m going to respectfully disagree!

LW:
I’m glad they took the risk, even though it didn’t quite work for me. It seemed like the dancers enjoyed the experience.

MF:
For what it’s worth, though, I’m eager to see more of Marston’s work.

CL:
I’m with Courtney! I just feel kind of bad for Marston, in that she didn’t make this with ABT in mind, and now she’s being criticized, when American audiences don’t really know her and could have gotten a better impression of her work.

LW:
Totally agree! And I hope she isn’t punished with less future work after this.

CE:
I, for one, can’t wait to see future casts take this on. There’s a lot of character work to sink their teeth into. But that is. perhaps a story for another day.

The post Love It or Hate It, Our Editors Discuss All Things Jane Eyre appeared first on Dance Magazine.

10 Ballets For When You'd Rather Watch Your Literature

Courtney Escoyne — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 23:00:00 +0000

When American Ballet Theatre announced yesterday that it would be adding Jane Eyre to its stable of narrative full-lengths, the English nerds in the DM offices (read: most of us) got pretty excited. Cathy Marston’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel was created for England’s Northern Ballet in 2016, and, based on the clips that have made their way online, it seems like a perfect fit for ABT’s Met Opera season.

It also got us thinking about what other classic novels we’d love to see adapted into ballets—but then we realized just how many there already are. From Russian epics to beloved children’s books, here are 10 of our favorites that have already made the leap from page to stage. (Special shoutout to Northern Ballet, the undisputed MVP of turning literature into live performance.)

Northern Ballet in David Nixon’s The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Star-crossed lovers? Check. Wild party scenes? Check. The 1920s aesthetic is just bonus.

Dutch National Ballet in John Cranko’s Onegin (Alexander Pushkin)

It’s a novel in verse, but it still counts! Cranko’s pas de deux work vividly paints the emotional turmoil of Pushkin’s characters, such as this sequence in which Tatiana imagines being loved by the haughty Onegin.

The Royal Ballet in Liam Scarlett’s Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

It’s spooky, it’s sensational, it’s a deep meditation on the nature of humanity—oh, and it’s alive.

Northern Ballet in David Nixon’s The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)

All for one and one for all! (And we’re all in for this epic fight choreography the dancers took to a famous Abbey in their hometown of Leeds, England.)

Charlotte Ballet in Sasha Janes’ Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)

The Brontë sisters had a knack for writing complex, tempestuous relationships—great fodder for pas de deux like this one.

The Washington Ballet in Septime Webre’s Peter Pan (J. M. Barrie)

Sword-fighting, pirates, pixie dust and a ticking crocodile? This one simply flies off the page.

Hamburg Ballet in John Neumeier’s Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)

Some would argue that Tolstoy’s epic is the greatest literature ever written, but you can’t argue with the fact that the titular heroine is a deliciously complex character to tackle.

The Royal Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

Why is a raven like a writing desk? We still might not know the answer to Carroll’s riddle, but we do know that Wheeldon’s blockbuster production is so full of incredible moments (like Steven McRae stealing the show as a tap-dancing Mad Hatter) that we had trouble narrowing it down.

Atlanta Ballet in Michael Pink’s Dracula (Bram Stoker)

There’s a reason it seemed at one point like every ballet company in America had a production of Dracula in its repertoire.

Northern Ballet in Jonathan Watkins’ 1984 (George Orwell)

Just in case the dystopian nightmare conjured by Orwell wasn’t vivid enough in your own imagination.

The post 10 Ballets For When You'd Rather Watch Your Literature appeared first on Dance Magazine.

10 Ballets For When You'd Rather Watch Your Literature

Courtney Escoyne — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 23:00:00 +0000

Northern Ballet in David Nixon’s The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Star-crossed lovers? Check. Wild party scenes? Check. The 1920s aesthetic is just bonus.

Dutch National Ballet in John Cranko’s Onegin (Alexander Pushkin)

The Royal Ballet in Liam Scarlett’s Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

It’s spooky, it’s sensational, it’s a deep meditation on the nature of humanity—oh, and it’s alive.

Northern Ballet in David Nixon’s The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)

All for one and one for all! (And we’re all in for this epic fight choreography the dancers took to a famous Abbey in their hometown of Leeds, England.)

Charlotte Ballet in Sasha Janes’ Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)

The Brontë sisters had a knack for writing complex, tempestuous relationships—great fodder for pas de deux like this one.

The Washington Ballet in Septime Webre’s Peter Pan (J. M. Barrie)

Sword-fighting, pirates, pixie dust and a ticking crocodile? This one simply flies off the page.

Hamburg Ballet in John Neumeier’s Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)

Some would argue that Tolstoy’s epic is the greatest literature ever written, but you can’t argue with the fact that the titular heroine is a deliciously complex character to tackle.

The Royal Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

Atlanta Ballet in Michael Pink’s Dracula (Bram Stoker)

There’s a reason it seemed at one point like every ballet company in America had a production of Dracula in its repertoire.

Northern Ballet in Jonathan Watkins’ 1984 (George Orwell)

Just in case the dystopian nightmare conjured by Orwell wasn’t vivid enough in your own imagination.

The post 10 Ballets For When You'd Rather Watch Your Literature appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Ballet Unbound: SFB's 17-Day Festival Asks Where the Art Form is Headed

Claudia Bauer — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 23:00:00 +0000

The ballet world will converge on San Francisco this month for San Francisco Ballet’s Unbound: A Festival of New Works, a 17-day event featuring 12 world premieres, a symposium, original dance films and pop-up events.

“Ballet is going through changes,” says artistic director Helgi Tomasson. “I thought, What would it be like to bring all these choreographers together in one place? Would I discover some trends in movement, or in how they are thinking?”

San Francisco Ballet in rehearsal for Justin Peck’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. Photo by Erik Tomasson, Courtesy SFB

Those questions are perennially on Tomasson’s mind. He’s convened two previous festivals—1995’s UNited We Dance and 2008’s New Works Festival—to take ballet’s current pulse.

This time around, David Dawson, Alonzo King, Edwaard Liang, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Cathy Marston, Trey McIntyre, Justin Peck, Arthur Pita, Dwight Rhoden, Myles Thatcher, Stanton Welch and Christopher Wheeldon had three-week creative residencies between July and October of last year during which they each created 30-minute works on the SFB dancers.

The roster reflects Tomasson’s personal wish list. It is Dawson’s first American commission, whereas Wheeldon is an SFB mainstay creating his 10th commission for the company. “The thought was to give the choreographers a forum to try something that they had not tried before,” says Tomasson. King, Marston, Rhoden and Ochoa were also paired with directors to create short-form dance films inspired by their new works. (The films are available online.)

Tomasson grouped the ballets into four programs of three works, to be performed in rotation. The festival’s second weekend also layers in four symposium sessions, with Dance Theatre of Harlem artistic director Virginia Johnson, dance-meets-tech guru Sydney Skybetter, writer Marina Harss and other influencers discussing hot-button topics like diversity, technology and globalism.

Putting on an event of this scale has taken logistical as well as choreographic creativity. “It’s a huge jigsaw puzzle,” says SFB general manager Debra Bernard. Organizing last summer’s travel and rehearsals for the choreographers, their ballet masters, and, in some instances, their composers and designers was a monumentally complex task. All of the choreographers were back in residence for three weeks prior to the festival to finalize their choreography, costume fittings and staging. “We have, like, 40 hotel rooms for a month,” says artistic administrator Abby Masters. “We’re also transforming one of our big boardrooms in the building into the choreographers’ office and lounge.”

The same space will also serve as a satellite fitting room for hundreds of new costumes, which were constructed in the UK, New York City and the Bay Area. “The costume part has been crazy,” says production director Christopher Dennis. Scheduling fittings within the dancers’ union-regulated working hours has been an additional puzzle.

Frances Chung and Angelo Greco in rehearsal for Dwight Rhoden’s LET’S BEGIN AT THE END. Photo by Erik Tomasson, Courtesy SFB

To prevent fatigue and free the dancers’ time for festival prep, Tomasson invited National Ballet of Canada to perform John Neumeier’s Nijinsky in the War Memorial Opera House April 3–8, before Unbound’s opening night on April 20.

Where does Tomasson hope all of this planning, traveling, creating and schedule-juggling will lead? “I don’t honestly think I’m gonna get a definitive answer to where ballet is going,” he says. “It’s fine if we don’t know. For me, it was worth asking the question.”

The post Ballet Unbound: SFB's 17-Day Festival Asks Where the Art Form is Headed appeared first on Dance Magazine.