Sunday, June 26

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Society pix from the National Ballet of Canada's gala.

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With the opening of Karen Kain’s acclaimed reimagination of “Swan Lake,” the National Ballet of Canada feted its former artistic director on June 14 at an event that was originally scheduled for 2020, during her 50th-anniversary season. Co-chaired by Emmanuelle Gattuso and Lynda Prince and presented by CIBC, the gala featured tributes to Kain and a dinner onstage at the Four Seasons Centre.

 

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A review of the West Australian Ballet by Rita Clark for Limelight.

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The grandeur of this contemporary triple bill was blissful to watch.

With no set intruding on an open stage, chiaroscuro lighting and magnificent music, the West Australian Ballet opened its contemporary season of STATE with a triple bill, each of which display similar themes: those of uncertainty and perplexity, with an underlying frisson of desire for an elusive state of peace.

 

 

 

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A review of “America(na) to Me,” at Jacob's Pillow by Janine Parker in The Berkshire Eagle.

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The very full buffet George and Rosa-Salas offer us here is, as they said in their onstage speech, a “response” to Shawn’s idea of American identity. Thus, importantly, in addition to genres which Shawn himself presented — Bharatanatyam, flamenco, modern, ballet, albeit danced in today’s cadences — styles he avoided, jazz and tap, are also on the menu. (Thankfully, Pillow directors have hosted these genres for quite a while now, as well as others, such as hip-hop, that hadn’t even been invented during Shawn’s tenure.) Meanwhile, the two large portraits that used to flank the Shawn stage — he posing in traditional Native American attire, his sometime dance partner/sometime wife Ruth St. Denis in costume as an Asian goddess — now live in the archives barn, where the intention is to spark conversation, rather than outright cancellation.

 

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A review of a Wayne McGregor program at La Scala by Silvia Poletti for Bachtrack.

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The dramatic focus being the mother’s choice, AfteRite benefited from the performance of Alessandra Ferri, whose beautiful lines are still immaculate, but above all whose intensity as ‘mater dolorosa’ in the last duet with her persecutor – the outstanding, virile Nicola del Freo – was absolutely terrific. She made her gestures of despair and rage devour the space all around her. If only the temperature in the rest of the creation had boiled as in this moment.