Sunday, October 15

[dirac]

A review of the Joffrey Ballet in "Frankenstein" by Kathy D. Hey for Third Coast Review.

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Jonathan Dole is stunning as the Creature. His movements are animalistic and graceful as he moves between all fours with the distorted yet beautifully graceful moves of a newly animated and sentient being. Dole’s facial expressions are beautiful as the Creature is horrified at seeing himself and then reading Victor Frankenstein’s journal. He projects an atavistic rage and jealousy that elicits empathy. José Pablo Castro Cuevas is an astonishing Victor Frankenstein, who goes mad from guilt for unleashing the Creature into the world. His dance moves are effortless, especially when he is partnered with Amanda Assucena as Elizabeth. Their dance is a courtship that is infused with sensuality and eroticism.

 

[dirac]

A review of Ballett am Rhein by Vikki Jane Vile for Bachtrack.

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Programming three choreographers who are always box office favourites is as sure fire a hit as can be for Ballett am Rhein who debut this neoclassical triple bill featuring a selection of tried and tested successes. The work is familiar, but how does the company stack up with the athletic demands of George Balanchine’s Rubies, and the physicality of William Forsythe’s Enemy in the Figure, with some Hans van Manen thrown in for good measure? Results are mixed in an engaging but disjointed evening. 

 

[dirac]

A review of Kansas City Ballet in "Jekyll and Hyde" by Hilary Stroh for Bachtrack.

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Choreographically, there was much to celebrate in the choices Caniparoli made to tell this horror story in movement. Even a touch so slight as the maid (Naomi Tanioka) skimming backwards en pointe at dazzling speed was creepily suggestive. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a ballet scene quite so chilling as the danse avec les lits (in a few iterations throughout), a glimpse of the interior mayhem of that ‘apex’ of Victorian health science: the mental asylum. This was ballet blanc turned on its head, self-mutilating and hideous and sad. The patients, in shapeless white gowns, pushed their institutional beds on stage, their faces (and identities) hidden under wild hair and proceeded to the frenzied dance of those without self-awareness (or with too much), rattling the bars of their beds. Beds? Prisons? Graves? The constant prop was an open invitation to see a conventional thing as another, altogether bigger and more problematic thing.