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[dirac]

The lineup for this year's Fall for Dance is announced.

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A tap-dancing Steven McRae, one of the principal dancers at London’s Royal Ballet; the New York- and Sweden-based Pontus Lidberg Dance company; and the Australian Ballet are joining the mix of this season’s Fall For Dance festival at New York City Center, which will run from Oct. 27 to Nov. 6, the festival announced Wednesday. Twenty companies and choreographers are taking part in the popular series, which features all tickets at $10 — a price which will now include the fruits of a large-scale renovation of the theater.

[dirac]

Houston's Ballet Barre kicks off a new season.

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This is one of the best tickets in town. For a $130 commitment, guests receive tickets to four ballet performances, after-parties for each, plus the three annual Ballet Barre bashes, backstage tours, dress rehearsals and the $55 membership fee. You can't beat it for value, for networking and for meeting a great group of individuals. Among the new recruits taking advantage of this plum offer were Amber Akers and Adrian and David Lindquist.

[dirac]

An NPR feature on Mark Morris' "Resurrection," which uses the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" score. Audio and video links.

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Here and Now producer Lynn Menegon was in a New York theater with Mark Morris back in 2002 as a film crew videotaped the ballet for an Evening at Pops broadcast.

And she found out that Morris’ version is more Busby Berkeley than Balanchine.

[dirac]

A review of the Chicago Dance Festival and Dance for Life by Hedy Weiss in The Chicago Sun-Times.

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Opening the evening was Spanish choreographer Cayetano Soto’s “Uneven,” a wholly brilliant exploration of fiercely disciplined off-kilteredness — all stark angles, hairpin moves, lightning speed and ferociously difficult partnering. It was danced to riveting effect by the uniformly virtuosic Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. And while it arrived onstage just hours after the East Coast earthquake, and might have been seen as echoing that upheaval, what it really suggested as a daggerlike internalupendedness. The dancers, in sleek, simple, geometrically-patterned, black-and-white costumes, moved on a white tentlike set, with the superb onstage cellist, Kimberly Patterson, playing David Lang’s stringent, powerful score against a taped accompaniment.

[dirac]

A review of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at Jacob's Pillow by Ken Ross in The Republican.

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The first piece, “Uneven,” featured the least well-known choreographer: Cayetano Soto. He probably won’t remain unknown for long, judging by this beautiful, graceful work.

Dressed in stark black and white costumes, the dancers demonstrated right away why Aspen Santa Fe Ballet has been performing to packed audiences at Jacob’s Pillow for several years. These athletic dancers with formal ballet training easily performed Soto’s sinuous movements set to a modern classical score by David Lang. An added bonus was a live cellist, Kimberly Patterson, performing live on stage during this work first performed in 2010.

[dirac]

A review of the Chicago Dancing Festival by Zachary Whittenburg in Time Out Chicago's blog.

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In 2011, new ballets are often typography for a classical alphabet. Now, good design is still art, to wit Uneven, Spanish-born Cayetano Soto’s 2010 work for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, which opened the first night of free dance this week, the Chicago Dancing Festival’s “Moderns” program at the Harris Theater. The stark octet borrows judiciously from Soto’s European contemporaries and Canadian Édouard Lock; thanks to Soto’s keen eye for proportion, the result is legible, unique and well-balanced.

The dancers wear long-sleeved leotards blocked in black and white; they release rapid, complex interactions between their limbs which are frequently robbed of full extension by the gravitational pull of their torsos. Uneven hurtles forward, driven by the music of David Lang (cellist Kimberly Patterson plays live onstage), yet many of Soto’s sharp, short phrases recall time-lapsed flowers rewound from bloom to bud.....