Don’t Feed these Swans: Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at the City Center
From the projections of flying swans to the tragic/heroic end, this production is thrilling, unsettling, comedic and beautiful, sometimes all at once.
Dance
From the Lenape to the L Train: Elisa Monte Dance at the Flea Theater, November 21, 2019
The evening was glorious with eight beautiful dancers moving effortlessly through three movements that relate to the “world’s melting pot of culture, New York City.” Before the performance started, Tiffany Rea-Fisher, the company’s artistic director, took the audience through a lot of technology involving cell phones and an app that had to be downloaded and installed on phones. It may have deepened the experience for some but I thought it awkward, unnecessary—and mostly unworkable. Millennials probably loved it.
Works & Process Rotunda Project at the Guggenheim: Dance Theater of Harlem at 50
“The arts ignite the mind, they give you the possibility to dream and to hope."
So said Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. The company made its official New York debut in 1971 in the rotunda of New York’s Guggenheim Museum. To celebrate the Guggenheim building's 60th and Dance Theatre of Harlem's 50th anniversaries, Works & Process, the performing arts series at the museum, presented a Rotunda Project that acknowledged Mitchell’s death in September, 2018 by including a restaging of his Tones II by former DTH principal ballerina Lorraine Graves with assistance from former principal ballerina Caroline Rocher.
Under Siege by Yang Liping Contemporary Dance at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival
Hundreds of silvery scissors hang above the stage in rows, gently swaying and giving off a tinkling metal sound. These scissors have a life of their own, rising and descending, sometimes in voluptuous swoops. On the right a woman sits amidst a pile of white material, cutting the fabric into Chinese characters which she holds aloft. Each time she does this the English translation of the characters appears on screens, introducing a segment of the performance.
Mark Morris Dance Group at Mostly Mozart
Watching Mark Morris’ dancers swoop and soar in V, (the number five, a reference to the number of musicians playing Schumann’s Quintet in E-flat major) was entirely thrilling. There are no stars in the company so the group has to work very hard—they do but it doesn’t show. The work is a pure representation of dance integrity.
Amanda Selwyn Dance Theater: Crossroads at New York Live Arts
Crossroads, the premiere of an evening–length work in three parts with choreography by Amanda Selwyn and company is abstract with a focus on decision-making and what an often disturbing process this is. It was exhilarating to watch the very well-tuned dancers move in solos, duets, trios, and sometimes as a complete group, each showing inner strength while maintaining an essential understanding of personal place and where their bodies fit into the space.
Lydia Johnson Dance at the Ailey Citigroup Theater
It was with relief that I greeted the final number on the program. Undercurrent, set to music by Henryk Gόrecki, woke up, enlivening me, the audience at large and also seemingly the dancers who had previously drifted through a series of works that I found bland and somnolent. Undercurrent raised levels of power and energy with repeated prancing steps, first danced by groups of women and later by the company’s men.
Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung: Design Dialogues with ISAW’s The Ancient World and the Ballet Russes at the Guggenheim
The evening provided a thoroughly engaging look at the creative process as it concerns choreographers, dancers, costume designers, music and a related exhibit that examines both antiquity and its relationship to the revered Ballets Russes.
