Friday, February 4

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An obituary for David Gordon by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times.

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“His gentleness and wit were always a pleasure,” said Mikhail Baryshnikov, who commissioned dances by Mr. Gordon for American Ballet Theater and worked with him on other projects, “but I think they were congenial cover for deep and sometimes dark thoughts about the world. That’s what made his work interesting. He’d take a chair, a picture frame, a simple step, and suddenly there was provocative theater. He was a sort of alchemist in that way.”

 

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A review of San Francisco Ballet by Janice Berman for San Francisco Classical Voice.

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Marston captivated with her 2018 ballet Snowblind, based on Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, The ballet Mrs. Robinson, based on the Charles Webb 1963 novella The Graduate that led to the 1967 film, takes both sources (noting too that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique came out the same year as Webb’s book) and extends them. The music is not by Simon and Garfunkel as in the movie, but a jazz score by Terry Davies, fueled by a smoky, seductive clarinet. While the new ballet is eminently watchable, with superbly agile, emotive and often witty results, the net result of the scenario, written by Marston with Edward Kemp, is a puzzle.

Rachel Howard reviews the company in "Blake Works I."

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But “ballet choreographer” does not seem the right descriptor for William Forsythe. He is not so much a choreographer as an artist — one of the most interesting alive in any medium — who has returned to using the idiom of classical ballet at the highest level. Which is to say, even if you don’t have the slightest interest in tendus and pointe shoes, you should see his “Blake Works I.” It will explode your ballet prejudices. And it will make you feel more alive.

 

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A review of Philadelphia Ballet by Ellen Dunkel in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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The ballet debuted at the 600-seat Perelman Theater on the Kimmel Cultural Campus. It is the company’s new home for contemporary ballet. (The ballet will continue to present classical works at the Academy of Music.)

A new resident choreographer, Juliano Nunes, has joined the company, artistic director Angel Corella announced just before the performance began.