Saturday, September 23

[dirac]

Ballet Theatre of Maryland presents "The Firebird."

Quote

To celebrate the company’s Sapphire Anniversary, the program also includes Founding Artistic Director Edward Stewart’s Sapphire Romance and two of his pas de deux: Toujour Amour and Longings. Also honoring the company’s Artistic Director Emeritus, the evening will include Dianna Cuatto’s crowd-favorite Italian Symphonette. This ode to George Balanchine is set to the music of Mendelssohn.

 

[dirac]

A review of Houston Ballet by Molly Glentzer in The Houston Chronicle.

Quote

The most imposing character in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s first work for Houston Ballet is the stationary "figure" that serves as a set: An ancient-looking, gnarly tree whose bare, twisted branches appear to have caught the pages of a book torn apart by a storm. Without too much of a leap, you could read this tree as the mind of the woman cuddled by its trunk.

“Delmira,” which premiered Thursday, introduces viewers to Delmira Agustini, one the 20th century’s first major Latin American female poets.......

 

[dirac]

A review of San Francisco Ballet's next@90 Festival by Leigh Witchel for dancelog.nyc.

Quote

At the opening, it looked as if Possokhov might pull something off. His division of the concerto, and structuring of his dances was completely different than Balanchine’s. Balanchine’s neat symmetry of personnel made you see the music as neatly structured. Possokhov helped you see it in a more free-form manner, and made you realize that Balanchine’s division and firm corseting of the music could be considered arbitrary.

“Violin Concerto” faced its greatest challenges in the two central arias. If you’ve seen Balanchine’s duets to these, they’re indelible. Not-Balanchine wasn’t going to be enough. We needed to see Possokhov.

 

[dirac]

Latin American male dancers talk about balancing a career in dance with cultural expectations.

Quote

Barreiro had been working with ballet dancers for years through his commercial photography work. It was during this time that he found ballet dancers were challenging traditions and questioning patriarchal structures, and saw how this was reflected through the human form. He felt it was important to look more closely at machismo’s impact on men and boys. “We arrive at the limits of society. Look at the figures to do with mental health – that men die because masculinity doesn’t allow them to be sensitive, to look after ourselves,” Barreiro says. “There has been a preconception about masculinity across all of Latin America. I started to investigate why societies believe that dance is an art for women, or is feminised, and why there is such a misconception that ballet changes your sexual orientation, for example.”

 

[dirac]

A review of the new book "New York City Ballet: Choreography and Couture" by Laura Jacobs for Air Mail.

Quote

In 2013, the idea was expanded. The gala would connect emerging and European choreographers with fashion designers from around the world. What a bounty that year brought. For Angelin Preljocaj’s Spectral Evidence, a ballet about the Salem witch trials, Olivier Theyskens conceived sheer white shifts scarred hauntingly with red. For Benjamin Millepied’s Neverwhere, the astonishing Iris van Herpen, the most experimental couturier out there, created insect armor of iridescent synthetic scales, the blue-black of a beetle.