Criticals

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Criticals, Dance

Building Bridges

July 15, 2008

Published in Attitude: The Dancers Magazine, Summer 2008 Food for thought arose before the performance of Akram Khan’s zero degrees even began: we in the audience pondered the significance of two inanimate dummies posed on either side of a stage populated with not much else excepted a wash of light. Soon the lights came up behind the…

Criticals, Dance

In Second Position

March 1, 2008

Published in Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine Vol 22, No. 1 Spring 2008 Take one look at Lisa Thorn, and the last word that comes to mind is veteran. The petite, preternaturally beautiful blonde radiates such unspoiled youth and bonhomie, it’s easier to imagine her back home in the loaming fields of Virgil, NY, where she…

Criticals, Dance

The Drag is Dancing

January 15, 2008

Published in Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine, Winter 2008 It made perfect sense to shante, not walk, to your seat at the first performance of the Legendary House of Ninja’s The East is Red, a presentation of Dance Theater Workshop’s Studio Series on November 5, 2007; to a sinuous techno throb, one young patron earned cheers from the…

Criticals, Short Cuts

Short Cuts: DVD Catchup/January 2008

January 8, 2008

Shortbus. Director: John Cameron. Arriving before HBO’s coital Tell Me That You Love Me, this rather sweet exploration of relationships set in a post 9/11 New York also uses explicit sex as one of its many narrative tools. The result is often sexy and funny (see Francois Ozon) but also a little sad in its…

Criticals, Dance

Stories of Us

November 17, 2007

Le Vu Long/Together Higher, DTW Fall 2007 The remarkable elements of Dance Theater Workshop’s presentation of Stories of Us are established before the show begins. In this new piece by Le Vu Long/Together Higher, the audience is treated to an attenuated prologue in which not much happens, encouraging us to take in the hushed, vesper-tinged lighting and…

Criticals, Dance

Ohad Naharin Unbound

October 29, 2007

Published in Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine, Fall issue, 2007 No one who’s witnessed Ohad Naharin’s choreographic genius would blame the former artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company if he coasted on his prodigious talent, one that has rewarded New York audiences since the 1990s. But in Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet’s mounting of DECADANCE, a…

Criticals, Short Cuts

Short Cuts: On My Nightstand/July 2007

July 8, 2007

The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal (Vintage). Vidal was 20 when he wrote this coming-of-age novel, set in a post-war America when the word homosexual conjured netherworlds of perversion and depravity. The feat here isn’t the various affairs or even the self-lacerating observations of the characters (and what a bunch!). Maybe déjà vu…

Criticals

David Gordon’s Little Touch of Harry

July 1, 2007

Published in Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine, Summer 2007 Of all writers, arguably none has been a greater friend to the dance than William Shakespeare. The sheer number of evening-length works based on his plays and sonnets (and their sources) confirm an enduring collaboration that hardly shows signs of abatement. It’s no wonder: the plots are compelling, and audience…

Criticals, Dance

Steel Magnolia with a Whip

March 22, 2007

Ann Liv Young, Snow White The eyes have it. Ann Liv Young’s blaze with an intimidating mixture of superiority, petulance, and a danger that telegraphs a warning: can you handle it/me? It’s a look to wither a lesser mortal: entering The Kitchen’s performance space I felt it immediately, an unerring gaze that burned a hole in the soul…

Criticals

Bleak Beauty

January 20, 2007

Published in Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine, Winter Issue 2008 Shivers and awe: such dueling sensations were prompted by a camera’s slow pan along the surface of seeming corridors of ice. The shimmering walls, composed of a blue at once beguiling and ominous, begged us to imagine a time before National Geographic Specials, an Arctic landscape as…