Dance-Enthusiast.com Features

THE DANCE ENTHUSIAST ASKS: Sydney Skybetter on Choreorobotics, De-Stabilizing Norms, and The Dancing Future

The Dance Enthusiast — Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"I don't anticipate that there's going to be robots on the floor of the Joyce anytime soon, but it's interesting to me that Jacob’s Pillow, which is rebuilding the Doris Duke Theater, is imagining a dance future where sometimes you need to get a robot in an elevator." Sydney Skybetter, Brown University

IMPRESSIONS: Morgan McEwan's MorDance in their New Yonker's Studio Space

The Dance Enthusiast — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"McEwan knows how to charge an enormous space with energy. The dancers have the dynamism and sheen of thoroughbreds." Deirdre Towers, Yonkers

IMPRESSIONS: New York City Ballet's 75th Spring Season “The Future” at Lincoln Center

The Dance Enthusiast — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"The company describes its spring season on the cover of the playbill as “The Future.” I keep my fingers crossed, and wish for the best." Henning Rübsam, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca at The Joyce Theater

The Dance Enthusiast — Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"In Searching for Goya at The Joyce Theater, Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca, the longstanding flamenco company based in New York City, presents a compendium of dances predicated on the images of 18th-century Spanish artist Francisco Goya. The dances, by choreographer Martín Santangelo, embody the spirit of the paintings." — Catherine Tharin, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Ballet Hispánico at New York City Center

The Dance Enthusiast — Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Ballet Hispánico celebrated Eduardo Vilaro’s 15th year as artistic director with a powerful season at New York City Center." — Hannah Lieberman, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Dominica Greene in "ENUF" at Triskelion Arts

The Dance Enthusiast — Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Greene’s ancestors smile as she smiles, laugh as she laughs, and the presence of her family in the audience fills the space with warmth and recognition. Her offering is for them as much as it is for herself; for someone like me, it feels almost undeserved: an intimate gift of self-revelation and self-discovery through love." — Sarah Cecilia Bukowski

IMPRESSIONS: "The Lydian Gale Parr," a Chamber Oratio Featuring the Dancers of Ballez

The Dance Enthusiast — Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"The Lydian Gale Parr imaginatively and wholeheartedly embraces the questions and considerations of our time in its multi-layered tale of an identity and gender shifting hero who attempts to save their world from destruction. " — Kristen Hedberg, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Sydney Dance Company at The Joyce Theater

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"In ab (intra,) choreographed by Sydney Dance Company’s artistic director Rafael Bonachela, the dancers regard each other throughout the seventy-five-minute piece as they navigate tenderness and turbulence, connection, and division." — Cecly Placenti, New York

POSTCARDS: Claire Kretzschmar, Artistic Director of Ballet Hartford, Choreographs "Raffaella" in Indiana

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Raffaella is a fairytale ballet inspired by the life of a radiant ballerina, Raffaella Stroik, who died unexpectedly at age 23." — Claire Kretzschmar

THE DANCE ENTHUSIAST'S A TO Z: S for Sue SAMUELS and Ingrid SILVA

The Dance Enthusiast — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

IMPRESSIONS FROM TEXAS: Houston Ballet's "Bespoke" and Ballet Austin's "POE/ A Tale of Madness"

The Dance Enthusiast — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"When I saw Houston Ballet in Fall for Dance at New York City Center last October, I was impressed by the dancers’ fine technique and exuberant execution [...] Ballet Austin’s long-time director Stephen Mills has challenged himself and his company with a huge collaborative effort named POE / A Tale of Madness." — Henning Rübsam, Texas

IMPRESSIONS: Leslie Cuyjet's “For All Your Life” at The Chocolate Factory Theater

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Leslie Cuyjet is a master of layers. Her multimedia performance exhibition For All Your Life teems with interpenetrating modes of expression as words, objects, imagery, and movement echo, morph, and recur in clusters organized by the ever-present dark matter of her research." — Sarah Ceclila Bukowski, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Beth Gill's “Nail Biter” at NYU Skirball

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"heels click clack

one rib sideways

shins lit by shins

coattails and beret

a flash of red lining"

— Sarah Cecilia Bukowski, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Dance Theatre of Harlem at New York City Center

The Dance Enthusiast — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"This is a program for our time — respectful of the past and confidently embracing the future." — Henning Rübsam, New York, New York

THE DANCE ENTHUSIAST ASKS: Ballet Hispánico's Eduardo Vilaro on "Buscando a Juan" and Changing Narratives

The Dance Enthusiast — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"We're going to change narratives through full length work. So in the future, there are more heroines to talk about beyond Eva Perón, there are more heroes beyond Juan de Pareja, and there are stories beyond the Nutcracker [...] There's a lot to still be done and I'm so ready. " — Eduardo Vilaro, artistic director of Ballet Hispánico

IMPRESSIONS: Nederlands Dans Theater at New York City Center

The Dance Enthusiast — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Based in The Hague, NDT is home to some of the most talented and versatile dancers on the planet, but the company is cherished for its innovative, multifaceted choreography." — Cecly Placenti, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Raja Feather Kelly | the feath3r theory’s “The Absolute Future” at NYU Skirball

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Through these events Kelly probes questions on two sides of the same coin: what brings us together and what tears us apart. Beauty, terror, and vulnerability vibrate from every atom of this urgently expressive reckoning, only to settle gently in its totality: total eclipse, total attention, total love." — Sarah Cecilia Bukowski, New York

IMPRESSIONS from Boston: Vertigo Dance Company in “MAKOM” Presented by the Celebrity Series of Boston

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"'So complex the time we are in,' sighs Wertheim whose tours to China and Brazil had been cancelled because of anti-Israeli sentiment. “But we can always connect,” she adds hopefully. Wertheim attempts to find ways in which dance can address polarities, appreciating their complexity, while attempting to find a center." — Christine Jowers, Boston

IMPRESSIONS: Clymene Aldinger's CLYMOVE Dance at The Ailey Citigroup Theater

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"CLYMOVE Dance’s 2024 Spring Gala and Season celebrated the fourth year of Clymene Aldinger’s company, and left the viewers at The Ailey Citigroup Theater feeling empowered. " — Kristen Hedberg, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Megan Williams and Eve Beglarian's "Smile though your heart is aching" at Mark Morris Dance Center

The Dance Enthusiast — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"This entrance set the deliberate, thoughtful tone of Williams’ evening length work set to Beglarian’s anthology, Machaut in the Machine Age. Filled with gentle trios, duets, solos, and ensemble pieces, this pioneering work made me wonder about how emotional awareness, our use of time, space, energy, differ from era to era." — Deirdre Towers,New York

IMPRESSIONS: August Henderson / August & Co. in "Transverberation" at Triskelion Arts

The Dance Enthusiast — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Transverberation sweeps viewers into an experience of intimacy, reflection, and acceptance [...] with raw, authoritative performances by August Henderson, Jack Blackmon and Ragin Smith. " — Kristen Hedberg, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Stacy Grossfield's "metamorphosis 2" at The Chocolate Factory Theater

The Dance Enthusiast — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Addressing issues that affect the lives of contemporary women, Grossfield in metamorphosis 2 examines the far-right, wellness culture, millennials, boomers, feminism, Blackness, whiteness, birthing, and motherhood. Grossfield interrogates each topic with equilibrium. The inauthentic rhetoric of the first half of the program contrasts with ‘the real’ experience of childbirth in the second, positing ideas open to interpretation." — Catherine Tharin

IMPRESSIONS: Lacina Coulibaly | Compagnie Artistique Hakili Sigi in “Until the Lion Tells the Story…” at New York Live Arts

The Dance Enthusiast — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Through the challenges and rewards of progress, Coulibaly asserts a continual need for transformative awakening that draws on ancestral power to activate self-driven futures." — Sarah Cecilia Bukowski

IMPRESSIONS: Trisha Brown Dance Company at The Joyce Theater

The Dance Enthusiast — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

"Toward the end, the holdouts perform a series of flamboyant solos, sinking and swiveling, jogging and dodging, and we remember why we come to these parties at Trisha’s — for the sheer pleasure of moving." — Robert Johnson, New York

IMPRESSIONS: Stacy Matthew Spence's “I am, here; Here with us; Where we find ourselves” at Danspace Project

The Dance Enthusiast — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400