Thursday, September 8

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Houston Ballet revives "Peter Pan."

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This fall is Houston Ballet’s fourth time to perform McIntyre’s rendition of the classic tale. “Peter Pan” was the first full-length production he created for the company. Many story elements remain unchanged; Jeanne Button’s punk-rock inspired costumes, Thomas Boyd’s set design and Sir Edward Elgar’s score, arranged by Niel DePonte, will all be familiar to audiences.

 

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A review of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo by Lyndsey Winship in The Guardian.

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With an extensive rep, the company is dancing different programmes in London and on a UK tour, but everyone will get to see their send-up of Swan Lake, which is the highlight of this opening night. It has the tightest comic timing and most engaging characters, plus technically impressive dancing from swan queen Odette, AKA Takaomi Yoshino, AKA Varvara Laptopova (all the dancers have amusing drag names and backstories). Yoshino punctuates poised arabesques with hammy grins to the audience. He pops up later as Pan in the nymphs-and-fauns fantasy Valpurgeyeva Noch, dancing everyone else off the stage.

 

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Rupert Christiansen's Diaghilev’s Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World is The Daily Mail's Book of the Week.

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Though not homosexual, Nijinsky felt compelled to go along with Diaghilev’s sexual demands: ‘I hated him but I put up a pretence, for I knew that my mother and father would starve [otherwise],’ he later wrote. But Nijinsky was clearly a superb dancer. He captivated audiences with his famous supernatural ‘hovering jump’ powered by his muscled legs and springy toes. ‘It’s not difficult,’ he explained. ‘You just have to go upwards and then pause a little.’

 

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A listing of upcoming dance events in the new season in The New York Times.

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Compared to the strange, transformative exhilaration of last fall’s return to live performance, this season’s dance calendar feels both more abundant and more introspective. Many presenters are back to their pre-shutdown schedules and are once again able to welcome an array of international performers; many dance artists are only beginning to reckon with the fallout of the pandemic and other global crises, exploring themes of grief and upheaval. (Proof of vaccination may be required at live performances, which remain subject to changes because of Covid-19; check websites for updated information.)