It’s too easy to compare the appearance of a major ballerina with a local company to the visitation of a swan, especially when the ballet in question is that of Tchaikovsky. And it also minimizes the contribution of the company itself, which in the case of Boca Ballet Theatre would be distinctly unfair. But this past Saturday night’s mounting of Swan Lake with New York City … [Read more...]
Essay: Keeping dance all about the art
By Tara Mitton Catao Dance competitions are multiplying in profusion these days, forcing those of us in the art form to have mixed feelings about a growing popularity that seems to treat dance more as a sport than an art form. Dance has always relied heavily on technique because it uses the human body as its tool for artistic expression. The more technique a dancer has, the … [Read more...]
MCB’s ‘Don Quixote’ falls a little short of satisfying
By Tara Mitton Catao Of all the full-length classical ballets, it is Don Quixote that continually delights audiences, and Miami City Ballet’s production was selected to be a crowd-pleaser as well as a natural fit for the largely Hispanic company. The popular ballet has all the ingredients that make it easy for audiences to enjoy. The lavish costumes and sets by Santo Loquasto, … [Read more...]
Inventive, explosive Koresh Dance closes Duncan season
By Tara Mitton Catao The Duncan Theatre’s dance season came to a resounding finish with the explosive performance on Friday night of the Philadelphia-based Koresh Dance Company. Artistic director and choreographer Roni Koresh unleashed a movement vocabulary that was a fascinating flurry of endless invention. As the show unfurled, one got a tremendous sense of the artistic … [Read more...]
‘50 Years’ a standout at Ririe-Woodbury’s Duncan show
By Tara Mitton Catao On Friday night, the Duncan Theatre hosted the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, a Utah-based repertory dance troupe that continues to bear the name of the University of Utah professors who founded it over 50 years ago. However, the program didn’t have the variety that a mixed repertory program usually encompasses. Growing from a local company to an … [Read more...]
Strong lead performances lift Ballet Palm Beach’s ‘Romeo’
It was an interesting experience to see Romeo and Juliet at Ballet Palm Beach in the middle of the Winter Olympics at Sochi; if ice dancing is a somewhat clunky country cousin of the ballet, it has the same general wish to express profound emotion through the arc of the body. In its performance Feb. 15 at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens, Colleen Smith’s … [Read more...]
MCB’s dancers uneven in ‘triple threat’ at Kravis
By Tara Mitton Catao Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez opened Miami City Ballet’s Program III at the Kravis Center on Friday night and introduced two company premieres that two dance legends — George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins — created decades ago. Lopez, who danced as a soloist and principal with New York City Ballet under the tutelage of these trend-changing … [Read more...]
Naharin work brings fresh energy to Ailey troupe
By Tara Mitton Catao The dancers of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre were on full throttle as they worked the crowd at the Kravis Center on Monday night with a seasoned and savvy flair. The program, of course, included the infectious Revelations, which is Alvin Ailey’s most well-known work. Even after 50 years of regularly closing the show, this signature work managed … [Read more...]
Keigwin show’s best energy comes at the end
By Tara Mitton Catao Six dancers, one choreographer and one very small stage — it is a lot like being under a microscope and it is all very intimate. One can’t get away with much. Every detail counts. Every transition and theatrical expression (or lack of) registers. Therefore, performing in a small theater is not a casual thing. So when a New York-based modern dance company … [Read more...]
Creative courage, innovation keep Pilobolus audiences coming back
By Tara Mitton Catao So what would interest a collective of seven super-creative, highly-athletic dancers? Think out of the box. Search your imagination. Dancing with quadricopters? Been there, done that. Seeing how many dancers can fit into a mini-Cooper? Ah, good one, but it’s so three years ago. (The answer is 26, and by the way, Pilobolus holds the Guinness World Record for … [Read more...]