Litvak Dance Offers Spellbinding Premieres

Sadie Weinberg’s vision for Litvak Dance, her four-year-old company, is to attract top choreographers to create work for her powerhouse dancers. For Litvak’s performance last weekend, Weinberg assembled an international dream team. The show featured spellbinding premieres by Israeli dancemaker Ronen Izhaki and rising New York star Rebecca Margolick.

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Trolley Dances 2022 Elevates

Isaacs has a brilliant eye for composition, and she blended a range of groupings and levels, spotlighted a pair of dancers while the rest clustered; she might have even choreographed the mesmerizing cumulus cloud at the show I saw.

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Litvak’s “Dancing Outdoors” Offers Strong Geographic, Emotional Range

Strutting out in glitter and fur, Ashley Akhavan and Nick McGhee own the stage in “I hear everybody you know is more relevant than everybody I know.” Dipping, pivoting, vamping, Akhavan is all cool hauteur, while McGhee flashes a “please like me” smile. This deliciously cheeky piece opened “Dancing Outdoors Take 2,” Litvak Dance’s show in the courtyard of ICA in Encinitas on Saturday.

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Not Just Intoxicating but Deeply Satisfying: “Sauced” at Art Produce

Happily, “Sauced” is not merely fun; it’s smart, complex, and superbly danced. Choreographers Erica Buechner, Bradley Lundberg, and Blythe Barton pack so much substance into this suite of dances—the energy and speed of a jive number, quick shifts in level and direction, engaging dramatic tableaux, seemingly effortless changes in the cocktail bar set; there’s even a bit where dancers bring drinks to the audience.

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Strong Malashock Show Features Possible Successor

To a Michael Wall score that mixes crowd noises, breaking glass, and what sounds unnervingly like gunshots, five dancers advance warily, arms raised as if to ward off an attack. … The society Griffin creates onstage feels dangerous … and like an apt reflection of the present moment, in which the show took place outdoors on a chilly evening since we’re not yet done with COVID; and with a flag directly behind center-stage flying at half-staff in honor of the country’s latest mass shootings.

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Dance Rules in “Bob Fosse’s Dancin'”

Not entirely plotless, “Bob Fosse’s Dancin'” proceeds via light story lines created by Cilento and writer Kirsten Childs. They’re a mixed bag. A scene in a swanky night club—to “Sing, Sing, Sing,” played exuberantly by the 14-member orchestra—is a delight. Costumers Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung put the women in sparkly flapper dresses for Fosse’s signature Erté moves. Other sections, like “Big City Mime,” about a hick encountering the temptations of big bad New York, feel like jokes that go on and on, and they weren’t very funny to begin with.

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