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Team Spirit

When the Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to Lincoln Center November 1-13, iconic Taylor dances like “Esplanade” and “Company B” share the stage with world premieres from Amy Hall Garner and newly-appointed resident choreographer Lauren Lovette. Other highlights of the programming include a special evening celebrating the collaboration between Taylor and the painter Alex Katz, Kurt Jooss’s classic anti-war ballet “The Green Table,” and live music from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, led by maestro David LaMarche.

FEATURES | By Candice Thompson

Dance Reflections

Choreography is often described as a kind of drawing crafted from the materials of time, space, and flesh. In describing “Crowd,” choreographer Gisèle Vienne expands on this idea, likening her work for fifteen dancers taking part in a rave on a stage to “paintings where you have thousands of characters and the details are kind of overwhelming.” The dancers narrate their individual stories kinetically as the piece unfolds like an all night party, their movements modulating between different feelings of time.

FEATURES | By Cecilia Whalen

Reflections

At dawn on September 11th, the Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center was quiet and still. Only the fountain glistened in the subtle light of morning, and the tan and gray stone ground was cool to the touch. All of a sudden, at 8:15am, the stone began to heat up. The sun had risen, but the warmth was coming from somewhere else: A call was made from a pink conch shell whose sound expanded into the atmosphere and summoned a hurricane of white to encircle the plaza. Hundreds of bare feet dashed around and around the fountain, surrounding the space...

BOOKSHELF | FEATURES | By Sophie Bress

New Narrative

Meg Howrey isn’t interested in clichés. The professional dancer turned novelist’s approach to writing, especially when it comes to portraying ballet, is rooted in authenticity, nuance, and honesty. Her latest book, They’re Going To Love You, set to be released on November 15, 2022, is filled with these qualities.

FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | By April Deocariza

Inspiration in Mexico

On a hot July Sunday in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, young dancers and their families are crowded outside the Teatro de la Ciudad awaiting to take master classes with renowned Mexican dancer, Isaac Hernandez. The excitement is palpable. A proud father captures video of his son on his phone, as he tells the camera about the class he is about to take. Scenes like this may be common in cities like New York or London, where ballet, and the arts in general, have found their stronghold. But for Hernandez, it’s something he has devoted the last decade to forging.

FEATURES | By Apollinaire Scherr

Paul Taylor Forever

Paul Taylor’s early dances—confined to a handful of players whom he still couldn’t afford to pay—fit comfortably on the Joyce stage this June in the troupe’s first independent outing since the pandemic. (In March, the company appeared under the auspices of the City Center Dance Festival.) “Events II” (1957), three solos from “Images and Reflections” (1958), “Fibers” (1961), and “Tracer” (1962) also fit their long-ago moment and its strict avant-garde. But what they didn’t fit was the oft-told tale of how Taylor got from obscure beginnings to popular success.

FEATURES | By Valentina Bonelli

From Verona to Venice

In very hot Italian summer, travelling between Verona and Venice could reveal the tastes and manias of “the beautiful country” in the field of dance. In Verona, stormed by tourists this year more than ever, dance has a great tradition, as this writer remembers looking back at her childhood. At the Arena di Verona, you could admire the best of the then international dance scene, such as Maurice Béjart’s Ballet du XXème Siècle or classic ballets with stars like Rudolf Nureyev and Carla Fracci, Vladimir Vasiliev and Ekaterina Maximova, while at Teatro Romano more contemporary programs introduced companies such as...

FEATURES | REVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Bright Colours

The international dance festival Colours in Stuttgart is a fairly young endeavour. Commencing in 2015, it repeated every two years through 2019 and restarted this year with a grand program. Launched by Eric Gauthier together with Claudia Bauer and Meinrad Huber, the festival has received international acclaim since its conception. As often dance festivals do, it brings together dance professionals, amateurs and enthusiasts in a friendly environment where it’s possible to relish in a vibrant and colourful atmosphere.

FEATURES | By Sophie Bress

Through dance history, finding my own

“Confidence, Sophie. You need to work on your confidence.” That’s the voice of every dance teacher I’ve ever had, a cacophony of mental noise as I hastily pack my things for my morning contemporary class at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. I’ve never been to the Pillow before, despite reading about it every year since about age 12, when I learned what it was. Growing up dancing in Wyoming, and then moving to California to continue studying dance in college, I’ve always been on the wrong side of the country. This year, though, I’m finally in the right place at the...

FEATURES | By Candice Thompson

The Biggest Dance Party of the Year

Abdel R. Salaam met Dr. Charles R. Davis in 1969. Known as Baba Chuck (“Baba” being a term of endearment for patriarchal figures in communities worldwide), he founded the DanceAfrica Festival at BAM in 1977. Baba Salaam, the current artistic director for DanceAfrica, danced in those inaugural performances with the Chuck Davis Dance Company.

FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | By Lauren Wingenroth

Past Meets Present

Claudia Schreier’s “Passage” for Dance Theatre of Harlem was commissioned to mark the 400-year-anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619. But to think of “Passage” as a commemoration, or as a historical piece, doesn’t do justice to its purpose or its power.

FEATURES | By Chava Pearl Lansky

The Nutcracker on Ice

While Isa Braun slogged through her workday on January 10, she kept overhearing people asking each other if they were going to the ballet later that night. Ordinarily, this would have been normal for Braun; until October of 2021, she was a freelance dancer living in New York City and working in an administrative position at School of American Ballet. But in January, Braun’s job was that of a dishwasher—and her residence? McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

Teenage Angst and Institutions

Watching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

The Me of Today

The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

America, F**K Yeah

After a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.

REVIEWS | Emily May

Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup

An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.