Tuesday, May 7, 2019
In the dance world, nobody makes a case for damaged heroes as brilliantly as Matthew Bourne. In his reworkings of classic stories and scores, the British director and choreographer invariabl…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:52PMSunday, March 3, 2019
What a difference a hashtag makes. When Los Angeles Ballet presented August Bournonville’s two-act story ballet “La Sylphide” five years ago, the performance seemed an elegy to lost lo…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:35PMSunday, January 13, 2019
Count no man happy till he dies, the great Greek playwright Sophocles warned us in 429 BC — a perspective renewed often in the deliberately bleak, slow and dark movement-theater spectacle …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:10PMSunday, July 15, 2018
Can a classic be offensive? Certainly reactions to certain scripted narratives, from Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” to D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” have changed with …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:30PMSunday, March 4, 2018
Continuity of tradition dominates the ballet world — and so does the new ways tradition can be embodied, reinterpreted and sometimes undermined year after year. Last performed in 2014, the…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:00PMSaturday, March 25, 2017
Call it a joyous homecoming. The national tour of Broadway’s “An American in Paris” has opened at the Hollywood Pantages, returning the story, characters and George Gershwin music to t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:50PMThursday, March 9, 2017
Endurance, survival, getting through troubled times: The program that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presented at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Wednesday focused on crucial life l…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:10PMSunday, February 12, 2017
A bleak creative vision infused with scenic dazzle gave a distinctive edge to three works by young, New York-based choreographer Jonah Bokaer on Friday in Royce Hall at UCLA. Cold and dark, …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:20PMSunday, July 10, 2016
Memo to choreographer Alexei Ratmansky: Play Misty for me. Yes, everyone in the ballet world is aware that you're one of the artists defining the art, someone renowned or notorious - dependi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:18PMMemo to choreographer Alexei Ratmansky: Play Misty for me. Yes, everyone in the ballet world is aware that you're one of the artists defining the art, someone renowned or notorious — depen…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:18PMSaturday, June 4, 2016
Visual splendor is a familiar and welcome component of the pieces created by Rosanna Gamson for her nine-dancer ensemble. Few Los Angeles choreographers use theater technology quite so disti…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:58PMMonday, May 9, 2016
Los Angeles Ballet’s new production of Frederick Ashton’s “Romeo and Juliet” is not only admirable. It’s news. Ashton ranks among the three or four greatest ballet choreographers o…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:46PMMonday, November 9, 2015
The West Coast premiere of “The Art of Falling” brought to the Ahmanson Theatre on Friday night some uproarious sketch-comedy supplemented and occasionally eclipsed by first-rate contemp…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:12PMSunday, November 8, 2015
The West Coast premiere of “The Art of Falling” brought to the Ahmanson Theatre on Friday night some uproarious sketch-comedy supplemented and occasionally eclipsed by first-rate contemp…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:49PMThursday, October 15, 2015
Twyla Tharp once choreographed different recordings of Frank Sinatra singing "My Way" in the same piece. That double dose of self-aggrandizement should have prepared us for her 50th annivers…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:09PMFriday, April 17, 2015
From its first performances in 1958, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has championed overlapping social and creative agendas. Not all of them were evident in the four-part “Power of …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:16PMTuesday, March 31, 2015
Dancing through its first nine seasons, Los Angeles Ballet has bravely tackled one rite of passage after another — not merely the major Balanchine and Bournonville choreographies that are …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:00AMFriday, December 19, 2014
Reflecting fast-evolving social and marital realities, the same-sex duet became a staple of new choreography on nearly every local dance stage in 2014, ranging from the dazzling partnering i…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMMonday, October 27, 2014
Even if Benjamin Millepied never creates a dance worth seeing more than once, his L.A. Dance Project deserves high praise for attracting young audiences with contemporary works that challeng…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:30AMMonday, October 20, 2014
"Swan Lake" has been a work in progress ever since its first 1877 Moscow version (now lost), with each new generation adding to — and sometimes undermining — its evolving richness and de…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:30AMFriday, October 10, 2014
In an age of rampant ballet revisionism, finding an unorthodox "Swan Lake" isn't difficult. In Denmark there's one that depicts the life of Tchaikovsky. Germany offers a version that focuses…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:44PMSunday, April 13, 2014
Paul Taylor served the first generation of modern dance pioneers as a performer, then helped create and redefine the second as a choreographer.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00PMSaturday, February 1, 2014
Classic ballets change over time---sometimes radically. Take "Giselle," the antique, tragic two-act dance drama about a peasant girl driven mad by a nobleman but who rises from her grave to …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:46PMMonday, December 16, 2013
Lively and resourceful, with an unusual array of bright, painted backdrops adding to the Christmas cheer, "The Great Russian Nutcracker" came to the Wiltern Theatre on Sunday performed by th…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:20PMFriday, November 22, 2013
Matthew Bourne’s delirious remake of "The Sleeping Beauty," which opened Thursday at the Ahmanson Theatre, managed to leapfrog through time as magically as other major productions whil…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:50PMSaturday, October 19, 2013
On the struggling and often confused American dance scene, the three companies that make up Nederlands Dans Theater might seem to inhabit an alternative artistic universe. Think ballet line…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:15PMWednesday, January 16, 2013
Cathy Rigby channels her inner child triumphantly as always in the musical's title role in a restaging at the Pantages. The production is uneven, albeit still charming.Any show created by or…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:21PMWednesday, October 26, 2011
No choreographer alive knows more about getting pop songs on their feet than Twyla Tharp -- and just about everything she knows is on view in the musical “Come Fly Away.”
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:25PM 
