Sunday, April 17th, 2016
The Martha Graham Dance Company’s 90th anniversary season (April 14-18) at New York City Center opened with Graham’s Night Journey (1947) and closed with her Cave of the Heart (1946). In between these masterworks, about Greek tragedy heroines, was a world premiere by the experimentalist Marie Chouinard and the last proscenium work that the venerable Swedish choreographer Mats Ek said that he would ever make. Considering that Chouinard’s Inner Resources reads like an uninspired group of teenage competition dancers trying to look avant-garde and Ek’s Axe was both terrifying and beautiful, it is a tragedy that Ek will not be making more dances for the stage and that Chouinard will.
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Tags: Abdiel Jackson, Albioni, Anne O’Donnell, Axe. Ben Schultz, Cave of the Heart, David Hayes, Inner Resources, Leslie Andrea Williams, Luis Dufort, Marie Chouinard, Martha Graham Dance Company, Mats Ek, New York City Center, Night Journey, Peiju Chien-Pott, Rachel Straus, The Mannes Orchestra
Posted in The Torn Tutu | Comments Off on 90 Years and Counting: The Martha Graham Dance Company
Monday, February 14th, 2011
By Rachel Straus When the pressure is on to be romantic, delivering the goods is a challenge. The week before Valentine’s Day, four dance events intentionally (and unintentionally) dabbled in matters of the heart. Merce Cunningham’s 1998 Pond Way—as filmed by Charles Atlas—was surprisingly the most romantic. (It was screened at the Baryshnikov Arts Center […]
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Tags: Alex Escalante, DanceNOW [NYC], Joe's Pub, Kyle Abraham, Mark Morris, Martha Graham Dance Company, Merce Cunningham, Nixon in China
Posted in The Torn Tutu | Comments Off on Valentine Dances
Monday, January 17th, 2011
by Rachel Straus Finding clues to a lost dance resembles detective work. If you’re the Sherlock Holmes type, dance reconstructions can become obsessively fascinating. On January 9 and 10, the Guggenheim Museum’s popular Works + Process series hosted Pacific Northwest Ballet—Giselle Revisited. Under the artistic directorship of former New York City Ballet principal Peter Boal, […]
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Tags: American Dance Festival, Giselle, Guggenheim Museum, Martha Graham Dance Company, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Robert Wilson, Works + Process
Posted in The Torn Tutu | Comments Off on Mining the Past: A New Giselle, a Restaged Robert Wilson Ballet, and Charles Reinhart
