Septime Webre, artistic director of the Washington Ballet, speaking to the audience at Sidney Harman Hall Thursday night: "This is great. It's like we're on a giant Valentine's Day date toge…
Is it any wonder Harlem Shake videos have gone viral? It's all in the jump cuts, which add that little jolt of magic. Plus, the song's beat is hypnotic, the setups are quick and the routines…
Was it too much to ask that the Grammy Awards have some sparkling dance moments? Or do I, like the Rihanna-Chris Brown reunion, ask too much? Apparently so. The best dance performance at the…
Sequestration, furloughs and other horrors: Washington's specific fears and the nation's general unease took shape in a dance by Mark Morris called "The ÂOffice." Of course, that's just …
"This music is all about sex!" squawks a bespectacled, nerdy musicologist as the slashing chords of Stravinsky's ode to the id, "The Rite of Spring," reach their shattering peak. Well, perha…
Speaking to the audience just before the curtain lifted on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Tuesday night, Robert Battle, the company's director, joked about how he hadn't been born ye…
Beyonce, what got into you? Strutting through a swirl of smoke at the start of her Super Bowl halftime show last night, the golden-maned songstress pounded the stage, each step of her…
A Ronald K. Brown program is the dance equivalent of comfort food. Especially on such a frigid, blustery night as Friday, when you were all but blown from 21st Street through the doors of Li…
When he is in the studio creating a dance, choreographer Mark Morris faces no end of decisions, questions, problems. How does he solve them? Honey, you have no idea. Neither does he. Le…
If there's a theme to the hefty spring dance roster, it's that excellence lies in all directions. Rely on the offerings of any single venue at your peril, for in this season " which looks to…
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 you're am…
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 are…
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 present…
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 with comf…
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 decided …
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 more l…
A 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 with a…
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 ano…
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 public s…
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 …
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 wo…
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 Ke…
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's m…
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." Hurricane…
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 . .�