Posts by Janice Steinberg
Christopher K. Morgan Makes Strong Malashock Dance Debut
The program offered a first look at dances made for Malashock Dance by its new artistic director, Christopher K. Morgan. Good news: Morgan’s work has the kind of complex engagement with ideas we’ve enjoyed from John Malashock for 35+ years. There’s also an appealing playfulness, as well as a democratic approach to composition that may be a mixed blessing.
Read MoreCity Ballet Soars in Premieres
Maurice Ravel didn’t intend for Bolero to be about sex. But the popular response to his 1928 composition—and of course the film “10”—have argued otherwise. Now there’s a fresh testament to the music’s erotic power: City Ballet of San Diego’s “Bolero—The Awakening,” which premiered at the Balboa Theatre last weekend. The ballet by company co-founder Elizabeth Wistrich sizzles.
Read MoreA Choreography Master Class: Malashock’s Everyday Dances
Gina Bolles Sorensen and Kyle Sorensen begin with “a single image and a few questions. Image: a path. Questions: How and why do we help each other along?” … Their mesmerizing “On Going” gleams with choreographic intelligence. Like a master class in choreography, much of the work in this strong program showed that kind of clarity of intention.
Read MoreLeverage: Tiler Peck and Her Brilliant Friends
Tap is percussion, it’s a conversation begun by Dorrance’s feet as the curtain opens, so clean you catch each sharp flap and the shush as she swings a foot to the side. … The piece is subtitled “Subdivisions of Time and Space, and Intersections of Isolation and Community, Longing and Joy.” If that sounds like an everything bagel of a dance, it is.
Read MoreCity Ballet Dances in the Moonlight
Can’t City Ballet of San Diego afford shirts for its male dancers? Just kidding. The bare-chested guys looked swell in a show that was a charming mix of setting—UCSD’s Epstein Family Amphitheater—and a program of superbly danced all-new work.
Read MoreBODYTRAFFIC Offers Delectable Food for Thought
BODYTRAFFIC explored an intriguing range of music-dance relationships in work by an international roster of choreographers. Two of the Los Angeles company’s pieces were set to feel-good tunes by the likes of Peggy Lee and Oscar Peterson. Another used sappy songs by male crooners as an ironic counterpoint to almost-nude male solos. And one featured James Brown classics, but often edited into distortion. It made for an evening of superb dancing by eight gorgeous movers … and rich food for thought.
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