Posts Tagged ‘Sydney Dance Company’

May Dance in New York City

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

By Rachel Straus

May 1-2

Guggenheim Museum

The popular Works + Process series presents “American Ballet Theatre on to Act II.” Current ABT dancers will perform excerpts from their upcoming Metropolitan Opera House season. ABT alumni will discuss the challenges dancers face in the second act of their careers.  You can watch the event each night at 7:30 via livestream.

May 2

Baryshnikov Arts Center

In the final spring installment of BAC Flicks: Mondays With Merce, two Charles Atlas films of Merce Cunningham’s dances will be projected on widescreen. In “Crises” (1960), elastic cords connect the dancers to each other. Dramatic entanglements ensue. In “Native Green” (1985), John King’s music and William Anastasi’s evoke a scintillating spring. Cunningham scholar Nancy Dalva will speak to former Cunningham dancer Gus Solomons, Jr.

May 3-June 12

The David H. Koch Theater

The opening week of the New York City Ballet’s spring season will showcase 12 of Balanchine’s works, which insiders refer to as “black and white” ballets because the costuming is bare bones. Most often, the women wear black leotards and white tights. The men wear black tights and white t-shirts. The choreography is hardly sparse. Up next will be the May 11 world premiere of Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” set to the Kurt Weill score, featuring Patti LuPone and Wendy Whelan as sisters (which will be hard to believe). The final week’s performances are titled “See the Music…” and will highlight NYCB’s musical repertory as performed by its 62-piece orchestra. The June 12 “Dancer’s Choice” performance will feature works handpicked by the company’s dancers. Over the seven-week season, the company will perform 19 works by Jerome Robbins, Susan Stroman, Christopher Wheeldon, NYCB Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins, and George Balanchine.

May 3

The Apollo Theater

This Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater benefit performance will showcase Camille A. Brown’s 2007 solo “Evolution of a Secured Feminine,” which catapulted this complex, hip, young choreographer into the spotlight.

 

May 10-22

The Joyce Theater

The two-week engagement of Cuba’s Danza Contemporanea de Cuba stands out for its offering of three works: The U.S. premiere of “Casi-Casa,” created by the quirky, inventive Swedish choreographer Mats Ek, set to disco, hip-hop, swing and jazz; the world premiere of “Horizonte” by former Ballet Hispanico dancer Pedro Ruiz; and “Demo-N/Crazy,” made by Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela, which has been said to wow for its athletic partnering and semi nudity.

May 12-14

Cedar Lake Theater

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet will present a new installation created by artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer. Part choreographed dance performance and part interactive installation, audience members are invited to move freely through the space where the dancers will be performing.

May 12-15

Dicapo Opera Theatre

Dances Patrelle will present the world premiere of Francis Patrelle’s “Gilbert & Sullivan, The Ballet!” an evening-length work, featuring live music and singers, and inspired by characters drawn from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas.

May 13

Buttenwieser Hall at 92nd St. Y

The “Fridays at Noon” free series will culminate with informal performances by tap and step dancing virtuosos Marshall Davis, Jr., Andrew Nemr, and their guests. Davis, Jr. performed in Savion Glover’s Tony Award winning “Bring in ‘Da Noise Bring in ‘Da Funk.” Nemr has the credentials too, having performed along side the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Jimmy Heath, Les Paul, Harry Connick and the Lionel Hampton Orchestra.

May 16-June 29

Metropolitan Opera House

American Ballet Theatre will hold its annual seven-week season. The big event will be the New York premiere (June 9) of Alexei Ratmansky’s “Bright Stream.” Also of interest will be two world premieres (May 24-26) by Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon, a New York premiere by Benjamin Millepied, and a revival of Antony Tudor’s “Shadowplay.” The full-length ballet offerings will be “Giselle,” “Swan Lake,” “Cinderella,” “Coppelia,” “Don Quixote,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” and “Lady of the Camellias.”

May 20

Ailey Citigroup Theater

“Performing the Border” aspires to blend and build on the grammar of two Indian classical dance forms, Bharata Natyam and Odissi.  David Phoenix Singh, who runs Dakshina Company, a Bharata Natyam and modern dance company, and Nandini Sikand, who directs Sakshi Productions, a neo-classical and contemporary Odissi dance company, will collaborate.

 

May 21

Manhattan streets

This year’s New York City Dance Parade will showcase 65 dance genres. The parade will start on 21st street, move down Broadway, pass through Union Square, and take over University Place, Eighth Street and St. Mark’s. The House, Techno and Disco floats will lead the celebrants to Tompkins Square Park and to DanceFest, which will offer stage and site specific dance performances and free dance lessons. This will not be a sedentary experience.

May 23

Judson Memorial Church

This year’s Movement Research Gala will feature Trisha Brown’s “Set and Reset” (1983) as performed by its original cast of dancers, who have become dance makers in their own right.

Underwear in Underland: Stephen Petronio Dance Company

Monday, April 11th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

Stephen Petronio likes underwear. His steely and mellifluous skeins of movement—via the bare legs and buttocks of talented dancers—can be transporting. In Petronio’s New York premiere of “Underland,” the first ten minutes was beautiful. But as time progressed on April 10 at the Joyce Theater, “Underland” became an aerobic workout for the eyes. The dancers never stopped moving. Then there was the matter of the work’s subject.

Created on and for the Sydney Dance Company in 2003, “Underland” initially seemed to be about Australia. The evening-length piece incorporated music by the Australian rocker Nick Cave. It projected video, created by fellow Down Under filmmaker Mike Daly. Daly and Cave’s work explored human doom and gloom. But Petronio’s channeling of the fashion world, particularly its blank stares of runway models, felt at odds with the collaborators’ ideas. As his 12 performers bounded through space, beating their legs together and then splitting them open with utter ease, they looked detached. Their faces bore no relationship to the ecstasy of their movements—or to Armaggedon.

Photo: Julie Lemberger

Mired in multiple ideas, “Underland”‘s elements never quite coalesced. Petronio’s kinesthetically driving choreography made the dancers appear invincible. Daly’s video—with its projected images of atomic mushroom clouds, raging fires, and towns flattened by a tsunami—featured environmental havoc. Cave’s lyrics delivered a vague malaise. Yet in the section named after Cave’s “Weeping Song,” the dance and music elements cohered. The cast (costumed in Tara Subkoff’s military-style fatigues) marched in geometric patterns. Cave’s song, a march and a lament, supported the choreography. When one and then two performers broke out of their soldier-like lines, their gesturally-driven solos and duets seemed to speak of loss of life.

The audience, however, didn’t react to “Weeping Song” with the same enthusiasm as the section titled “Ship Song.” Named after Cave’s 2001 hit, “Ship” featured four performers who swayed at the lip of the stage, as though on a crowded steamer. Gino Grenek appeared in underwear and a leather trench coat. Amanda Wells and Shila Tirabassi wore late 19th century slip dresses. Their swaying evolved into a languid-style orgy, where they grabbed each other’s breasts, kissed and swooned. But being on a boat (perhaps bound for an Australian penal colony) seemed beside the point. It was the underwear, and what lies beneath it, that made this part of “Underland” clearly understandable.