Sunday, January 20, 2013
As the curtain opens on “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” performed by the National Ballet of Canada at the Kennedy Center, we’re in familiar territory. That is, it’s familiar if…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 07:32PMThursday, December 27, 2012
For a movie, the Joe Wright-Tom Stoppard “Anna Karenina” is a pretty terrific play. In fact, this exquisite film makes a powerful case for live physical theater. Not only that, but there…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 02:04PMFriday, December 7, 2012
Cliffhangers both fiscal and presidential may have dominated Washington’s public sphere, but subtler, timeless concerns governed its stages. The year’s most memorable dance offerings pre…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 03:13PMThursday, December 6, 2012
O come, all ye faithless: Behold a “Nutcracker” to banish ghosts of sugar-plum hangovers past. Ballet West’s production, which opened Wednesday at the Kennedy Center, fairly bursts wit…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 02:38PMSaturday, December 1, 2012
By the looks — or rather, sound — of things, Clara’s family has fallen on hard times. Maybe her old man lost money on the railways. At any rate, these once-prosperous Washingtonians de…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 02:43PMFriday, November 30, 2012
Partway through Lar Lubovitch’s jagged and unsettling piece called “Crisis Variations,” one of the dancers flips his partner upside down and spins her on her head. This was one of the …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:30PMA cluster of birch trees grows outside Natalia Makarova’s house. She planted them years ago in the clearing that slopes away from her dance studio. “My corps de ballet,” Makarova says …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:04PMSunday, November 18, 2012
Brian Brooks Moving Company takes its name seriously. It could also be known as Nonstop or Really Busy, but Moving gets the idea across. By the end of Saturday’s program, when Brooks and a…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 05:43PMFriday, November 16, 2012
Life starts early in the Verona of “Romeo and Juliet,” which the San Francisco Ballet launched Thursday at the Kennedy Center Opera House. As dawn rises over the Italian city’s busy pu…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:15PMWednesday, November 14, 2012
Once upon a time, a ballet commandment reigned upon the waterfront: Thou shalt open thy Kennedy Center engagement with a mixed-repertory program during the slow-selling workweek. Then, and …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:45PMFriday, November 9, 2012
It’s a paradox that artists in any medium struggle with: The best art comes from personal excavation that unearths what we least want others to see. In other words, what we hide from the …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:19PMThursday, November 8, 2012
Neither Suzanne Farrell’s glittering name nor the coaching prowess behind it are enough to give her dancers the luster they desperately lack. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, performing at the …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:06PMTuesday, November 6, 2012
SAN FRANCISCO — Imagine the police surprise when, during a routine 1967 raid on a party in the Haight-Ashbury district, they hauled in not only weed and hippies but also two of the world�…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 04:17PMSunday, October 28, 2012
With the growing threat of an invisible swirling menace in the air, poised to suck away our power and leave us huddled in the dark, the mood this weekend was perfect for “Dracula.” Hurri…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 09:00PMFriday, October 19, 2012
Who could resist the extraordinary range of performers at the VelocityDC Dance Festival on Thursday night? There were ballet dancers, modern dancers, hip-hop, flamenco, Indian . . . And…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:27PMJordan Matter is selling dreams in his book. And he’s channeled Jerome Robbins to do it. It’s not just the high-kicking legs in heels that bring Broadway to mind in the photo book “Dan…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:18PMWednesday, October 17, 2012
During the second presidential debate Tuesday night, the round red-carpeted floor at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., resembled a boxing ring more than a stage. And frequently, substan…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 09:21PMWith one look at the stage before Alexei Ratmansky’s “Cinderella” began Tuesday night, you knew you weren’t in for a fairy-tale treatment. The drop curtain shows a crowded, crudely p…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 07:29PMSunday, October 14, 2012
The recession-choked early 1990s were no picnic for the arts. But there was a bright spot in Washington: the work of Eric Hampton. The dances he created for his company, Eric Hampton Dance, …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:06PMFriday, October 5, 2012
“I wanted to slip into the skin of a diva,” said Nadia Beugre, a dancer-choreographer from the Cote d’Ivoire, in a question-and-answer session after her performance Thursday at the Ken…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 08:19PMThursday, October 4, 2012
The numbness that would take his life started in his pinky toe. Facing his 50th birthday, the Washington ballet teacher and smart, discerning choreographer Eric Hampton was making a piece ca…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 02:40PMFriday, September 28, 2012
John Tiffany is agitated. His hands are waving around. He’s sputtering about something and you can’t yet make out what it is, but one thing is clear: This man who’s just come off a fli…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:25PMSunday, September 23, 2012
A high-pitched wail marks the beginning of “Rantau Berbisik,” translated as “Whisperings of Exile.” It’s the sound of pain, but it’s also a clear, ringing one-note aria. This was…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 07:18PMTwenty years after his dance company’s debut at George Washington University’s Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre, Dana Tai Soon Burgess on Friday was exactly where he started — working hims…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 05:48PMThursday, September 20, 2012
Going by the directive written in purple marker and taped to a wall, one rule governs this basement room in Northwest: NO BAD WORDS IN DANCE STUDIO.
Yet it’s laughable to think that sweari…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 06:55PMSunday, September 9, 2012
A performance by the Paul Taylor Dance Company is a terrific way to start the fall. I can’t think of a better one, in fact. The Taylor company has everything you want in a beginning: youth…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 06:22PMThursday, September 6, 2012
When Indian classical dancer Manjari Chaturvedi makes her American debut on Sept. 22, she will not be wearing the bright, ornately embroidered costume that is typical of kathak dancers.
“I…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 05:06PMThursday, August 30, 2012
John Cage could play on cowbells, rice bowls, car parts and temple gongs, smashing a wine bottle where an ordinary percussionist might strike his cymbals. But the one thing this musician who…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 12:05PMFriday, August 24, 2012
Last October, when Emily Oleson first unveiled “Vaudevival,” using tap, hip-hop and other dance forms to address race and culture-stealing, she was a University of Maryland graduate stud…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 11:56AMWednesday, August 1, 2012
In his long career, Bill T. Jones has gone from experimental downtown artist to two-time Tony winner. Bridging such different worlds makes for an uncomfortable perch, from which he must cont…
SOURCE: Washington Post at 07:54PMOn the catwalk suspended a hundred feet above the arena floor at Verizon Center, where you look down on the giant scoreboard that hangs over the void, the air smells like cigarettes and the …
SOURCE: Washington Post at 06:21PM 
