Barnett Serchuk - Page 3

Balanchine famously said in reference to 'Jewels,' his full-length 1967 jewel-themed ballet: 'I have always liked jewels. After all, I am an Oriental, from Georgia and the Caucasus, and a Russian. I would cover myself with jewels...The ballet had nothing to do with jewels. The dancers are just dressed like jewels.'

Born and raised in Rome, Roberto Campanella trained at the Scuola Italiana di Danza Contemporanea. In 1985, Roberto joined the Compagnia Italiana di Danza Contemporanea and later joined the prestigious Aterballetto. In 1993 he joined The National Ballet of Canada, where he was soon promoted to soloist and was cast in many classical and contemporary roles.

As part of the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance annual residency at Lincoln Center Koch Theater, Taylor has introduced 'Dances of Isadora,' staged by Lori Belilove, founder and Artistic Director of the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation and Company, and danced by Sara Mearns, the estimable New York City Ballet ballerina.

All the other works on the program were by Anna Sokolow in different periods of her choreographic and teaching careers. Some had direct themes, which surprised me since I did not do any in-depth research before the performance. I preferred if the works spoke to me directly, as I had never seen any of them before in my dance going career.

The New York City Ballet, or the House of George Balanchine as some refer to it, is presenting a number of Balanchineless performances. This is as it should be. Balanchine has been dead for over thirty years, and we could not possibly expect revival after revival. However, we can expect a high level of competence and artistry in the new ballets now being offered. Sunday, February 25, 2018, was another example of top notch dancing, if less than stellar choreography.

Before the curtain rose on 'What the Day Owes to the Night,' its choreographer, Hervé Koubi, appeared and made a short speech of introduction to himself and the dance.

Juilliard Dance Division need not worry about future applicants. Judging by the sheer amount of talent exhibited by the graduating classes of 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018 on stage, there could very well be an artistic explosion coming our way in the dance world. Talent. Is it a God given? Is it something studied? Or taught? I suppose we could discuss these for ages, but one thing is clear: the abundance of talent in the dance world is beyond comprehension. You can criticize the choreography, but the dancers themselves-no. How do you put all this into words? Maybe, WOW!! I know that it's not high toned, but what the hell else do you say?

Stefanie Nelson is the Artistic Director of Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup, a New York City-based contemporary performance ensemble. Her work distills deeply personal ideas into highly kinetic, expressive, and provocative works that are rooted in cross-media collaboration with artists working in music, video, and visual arts. Described as 'instinctual, untamed, and edgy,' Nelson's dances have been presented at some of the foremost contemporary performance venues in the United States, including Joyce SoHo, Dance Theater Workshop, LaMama Moves!, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and Jacob's Pillow, and internationally in Canada, Mexico, and Italy, among others. Nelson is an accomplished teacher as well as the founder and artistic director of DANCE ITALIA, an annual summer dance intensive held in the cities of Agropoli and Lucca, Italy. She recently served as a Choreography panelist for New York Foundation for the Arts Artists' Fellowships and curated a series How high is the ceiling in my glass castle? (and other perceived limitations) at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn. www.sndancegroup.org

Hofesh Shechter must be one angry choreographer, judging by his 'Grand Finale,' which I saw on November 10, 2017 at BAM. He gets right up in your face, so the loudness and grimness of the whole thing didn't surprise me-rather it just reiterated everything I've felt before when viewing one of his productions. I can't speak for anyone else, and, judging by the audience response at the end-whoops, screams, standing ovation-I am probably in the minority. What was a 2+ hour presentation with intermission could have been whittled down to 35 minutes. If there was ever too much of anything, this was definitely it.

Having been to Dresden and only seeing the opera, I was very curious as to what the ballet company had to offer. Luckily, I was not disappointed.

With this in mind, I approached Jessica Lang's production with trepidation, a lot of it I might add: Was this going to be overbearing, over the top precious, continually weepy or just plain meaningless?

If I were to use one word to describe Troy Schumacher's BalletCollective, it would be 'intriguing.' So should I go a bit further in this analysis: weird, inspiring, frustrating, slow, pedantic, moving? Probably more. It's just that Schumacher evidently has so much talent, yet he's still at a crossroad in his career, at least as far as I can tell. He has a million ideas, some scattered, some focused, and he has not yet fused them together so as to present the true choreographer that he aspires to be.

Occasionally, we go to 'Sleeping Beauty' muttering under our breath, 'I've already seen it 10,00 times. Yet another.' We get to our seats and wait for the overture to begin. Some of us know the score so well that we could hum it along from memory. Like all great music, it remains lodged in our innermost brain, as much a part of our defining personalities as our IQs. The orchestral leader enters; we can look at our watches, tap our feet, look around the auditorium. Is there someone I know? And then the brass, the cymbals. We switch to a receptive mode. The Lilac Fairy's theme starts, and we are transformed yet again to the magic realm of this iconic ballet. It never fails. It is a ballet that continues to enthrall us; it's great and can't be labeled. It's there-and always will be. Lucky for us!