-
Innocent Dance-Goers Giggle, Shriek, Cry for Their Teddy Bears!
We ascend to heaven—Rebecca Davis’s The birds are here. I hear them.—in the Chocolate Factory’s upper room where origami party favors, Hershey’s kisses, and gift bags stuffed with hug-eager teddy bears await us. Dancers press themselves into aerodynamic forms held aloft by partners as fans provide rushing wind. But rapture deflates fast: We’re told we […]
-
Fusion Troupe From Brazil Takes Brooklyn by Storm
Grupo Corpo’s women move with uncommon suppleness and don’t-give-a-damn sass; the men radiate a rootedness that inspires feelings of security. Viewers gasp, and other choreographers—from ballet to Broadway—must be hotly envious of Rodrigo Pederneiras for his gifted, glamorous Brazilian crew. At BAM, in the ballroom-inspired Lecuona—set to old-time romantic songs by Cuba’s Ernesto Lecuona—one couple […]
-
Dance
The Barbarians are at the gate, ready to take out the trash. Their show can’t begin until they clear WOW’s floor of SlimFast cans, diet soda bottles, women’s ‘zines, the Bible, and other discards. This red-hot, queer burlesque troupe comes value-added with radical politics, toy weapons, tank tops stained with menstrual blood (proffered for sale), […]
-
Giving Voice to the Voiceless in Time of Crisis
Witnessing the intimate Hillman Attic showing of Makeda Thomas’s A Sense of Place—developed in residence with Mozambique’s Companhia Nacional de Canto e Dança—felt like watching warriors prepare for the battle of their lives. Influenced by the aesthetics of Ronald K. Brown and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Thomas’s eight magnificent performers dug in and delivered, with […]
-
The Student Was Ready; the Teacher—a Whale—Appeared
Martita Goshen, interviewed for Disney’s Animal Kingdom magazine, described herself in childhood as “solemn and pensive.” She might have added, as is often the case, “I loved animals.” Her art remains solemnly entwined with environmental activism. Billed as a site-specific work attuned to the interior of St. Mark’s Church, her new Breathing Water . . […]
-
Nothing New Under Sun: What Goes Up Comes Down
The dancers in Icarus invariably served with distinction, even when comporting themselves like weird, humble little critters only an entomologist could love. A brief suite of dances by Elyssa Dole, Jonette Ford, and Jeffrey Freeze, directed by Nina Hein, Icarus reference the classical myth about crafting wings, taking flight, and falling. Squint and you could […]
-
Dance
Five by five in five: That’s the formula for Joanna Haigood’s “Breaking Ground,” an ingenious new series produced by Dancing in the Streets. The San Francisco–based dancemaker, noted for large-scale site-specific works, chose five stylistically diverse choreographers, planning to turn them loose on a history-rich Manhattan site slated for renovation. She kept the location secret […]
-
Dance
When Bill T. Jones showed a working version of Blind Date at Aaron Davis Hall in June, he said he wanted to find “courage to start speaking, even as the ideas are forming.” Begun soon after last November’s national elections as an antidote to despair and passivity, the finished piece will premiere in Montclair, doubled […]
-
Angels at Work
Choreographer Jeremy Laverdure took a 20-minute peek at a cool, unearthly realm in All the Faithfully Departed, performed by his “dance enterprise,” bêsto perfekto. Star-shaped balloons stretched across Here’s performance space, their golden gleam casting ghostly wisps of light that danced against the backdrop. Four women—Melissa Arra, Lindsay Mackay Ashmun, Tracy Dickson, and Isadora Wolfe—moved […]
-
Dance
What happens when two miserable working stiffs plug into the rockin’ soundtrack of their interior lives? In the case of Rock Out—an episodic, dialogue-free “play with music” by actor Gregory Jones—you get an irresistibly cute, surprisingly uplifting Fringe production, in a bite-size half-hour. Gary (Jones), bored out of his gourd, downloads some Led Zep to […]