The usual first seasonal appearance of our community ballet companies comes at Thanksgiving, when the arts world is suddenly flush with performances of The Nutcracker. This year, though, Ballet Palm Beach has changed that by mounting a show in October that featured not only its first Balanchine ballet but also a new work based on a classic fairy tale. That new work, … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2016-17: Dance
By Tara Mitton Catao The dance season in Palm Beach County offers a wide variety of everything from classic ballets presented by one of the best troupes in the country to new work by young, innovative companies making their own mark on the field. Here’s a look: Miami City Ballet will add five major works to its repertoire this season, included a highly anticipated world … [Read more...]
A lovely ‘Giselle’ at Boca Ballet
This has been a good year for 25th anniversaries of local arts groups, with the Kravis Center, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, and Boca Ballet Theatre marking that milestone. The ballet company, which is run by Dan Guin and his wife Jane Tyree, can draw on many a connection in the dance world for their educational mission and for a little bit of celebrity dazzle for … [Read more...]
Brilliant Godden work stands out at Harid spring recital
Rebecca Trionfo and Alexander Sargent in Renaissance Way. (Photo by Alex Srb) The spring concerts of the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton always begin with an introduction of the graduating class of dancers, who come to the mic, tell the audience who they are and where they’re from, and reveal their future plans, which are always very impressive. It’s a charming tradition … [Read more...]
Pilobolus, at Duncan, continues to redefine dance, astonish
Mike Tyus, Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern and Jordan Kriston in On the Nature of Things. (Photo by Grant Halverson) They did it again. This oddball dance company has delighted us with another dynamite performance. Started four decades ago by four gymnasts from Dartmouth College who, after wandering into a dance class, developed an idiosyncratic style of dance (which they named after … [Read more...]
MCB’s watery reboot of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ astonishes
Renan Cerdeiro and Emily Bromberg in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Photo by Alberto Oviedo) By Tara Mitton Catao The closing program of Miami City Ballet’s 30th anniversary season was a stunning new production of George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream — and what a sumptuous event it was. On Saturday night at the Kravis Center, there was a palpable sense of anticipation … [Read more...]
Ballet Palm Beach’s new ‘Gatsby’ clever, skillful
Addressing the elegantly dressed audience at the Eissey Campus Theatre on March 20, Ballet Palm Beach’s founder and choreographer, Colleen Smith, said she thought about creating a ballet from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby last season. Written about the excesses of the years after World War I, Smith felt Fitzgerald’s story was really about the American Dream, in … [Read more...]
Limon Dance marks 70 years in exceptional style at Duncan
A scene from the Limón Dance Company’s The Moor’s Pavane. (Photo by Bill Hebert) By Tara Mitton Catao While out on its 70th anniversary national tour, the Limón Dance Company made a stop here in South Florida as part of the Duncan Theatre’s Modern Dance Series. The program celebrated the creative essence of its founder/creator José Limón and gave us the opportunity to see … [Read more...]
Joffrey Ballet stunning at Kravis in all-contemporary show
It was a good night at the ballet — a very good night. Playing to a packed house for one performance only, the Joffrey Ballet showed an easy command of the physically demanding and highly technical program it boldly presented March 12 at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts. The calling card of the evening was the line-up of dance makers — a virtual Who’s Who in the new … [Read more...]
Ballet Palm Beach creates dance take on ‘Great Gatsby’
Just before Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby in his big mansion on West Egg, the party his neighbor is throwing for a large number of people is in full Roaring Twenties swing. And inevitably, that means dancing, from “old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles” to “a great number of single girls dancing individualistically,” all of it part of the … [Read more...]