Friday, October 13

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The Joffrey Ballet revives Liam Scarlett's "Frankenstein."

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The Joffrey Ballet opened its 68th season with the highly anticipated Chicago premiere of Liam Scarlett's critically acclaimed interpretation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This 19th-century novel-turned-pop culture classic is an ambitious production that features sensational choreography, costumes, special effects, pyrotechnics, and an original score. And even though the show runs 2 hours and 42 minutes with two intermissions, the sold-out opening night crowd stayed riveted to their seats.

Review by Lauren Warnecke in The Chicago Tribune.

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And as Creature, [Jonathan] Dole gives the performance of his life thus far. In just four seasons, he now emerges as a dancer to watch, tackling all the complexity of an unnamed wretch conflicted by an inexplicable, insatiable need to sow chaos — not to mention some really hard dancing. The Creature is tormented by an uncontrollable urge to inflict physical pain. He’s more conniving, though, in imposing psychological trauma, a nuance Dole makes masterfully clear. This is perhaps most evident in a brilliant ballroom scene, which has Creature weaving in and among a dizzying mass of waltzing couples. He vanishes then appears again and again, each time with a smirk on his mangled lips — then he destroys Frankenstein’s family.

Kyle MacMillan's review for The Chicago Sun-Times.

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Amanda Assucena shines as Elizabeth, the fiancée and then wife of Victor, whose guilt-ridden decline is aptly conveyed by José Pablo Castro Cuevas. Other notable performances include the fleet-footed and acrobatic Xavier Núñez as Victor’s friend Henry, Jeraldine Mendoza as the caring Justine and Sheppard Littrell, a Joffrey Academy pre-professional, in a polished, convincing turn as William. 

 

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Review of a new program by Christopher Willams by Brian Seibert in The New York Times.

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The new “Jeux” that Christopher Williams debuted at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on Thursday restores Diaghilev’s idea. Three men cavort, one of them in a tennis skirt. This and the other premiere on the program — “A Child’s Tale,” Williams’s version of “Contes Russes,” a 1917 ballet by Leonid Massine — are the latest in a series in which Williams takes works by the Ballets Russes, the early 20th-century company that brought Russian ballet to Europe and into modernism, and thoroughly reimagines them: queering, or in some cases, re-queering them.

 

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A review of Alonzo King's Lines Ballet by Rachel Howard in The San Francisco Chronicle.

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Nothing on this program, which closes Sunday, Oct. 15, is new, and that is to the company’s credit. Too often, Lines seems to get swept up by the pressure to offer another high-concept, highly packaged evening-length premiere. (Last spring’s collaboration between King and photographer Richard Misrach was one such extravaganza, a lengthy spectacle with a sheen of eco-consciousness and a dearth of trajectory.) 

 

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A review of the Russian State Ballet of Siberia by Ilona Landgraf in her blog, "Landgraf on Dance."

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This April, the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre scored a double victory at Russia’s Golden Mask Awards. Their reconstruction of “Catherine ou la fille du bandit” won the prize for the best ballet production and the best female part. I was curious about the company’s repertoire, but failed because of the distance. Krasnoyarsk is in Siberia, around 2400 miles east of Moscow. Luckily, Nikita Dmitrievsky helped me out. His ballet “Catharsis Dante” received its world premiere at the Krasnoyarsk Ballet this June and Dmitrievsky sent me a recording without much ado.

 

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A Tatler interview with Matthew Ball and Mayara Magri.

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Mayara Magri began dancing in her native Brazil when she was eight and moved to the UK to train with the Royal Ballet, joining the company in 2012 and becoming a principal in 2021. She has danced as Odette/Odile, Juliet and Giselle among countless others. Meanwhile, Magri was not wrong to highlight Ball’s famed ascent through the Royal Ballet, from the company’s White Lodge school to joining the company in 2013, becoming a principal by 2018. The Liverpudlian has played almost every major role in the classical and contemporary repertoire; from Romeo and Florimund to Siegfried and the Swan in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake.