See also, my longer piece at 4dancers.org The week before the SYTYCD 2013 Seattle performance, I had the opportunity to interview the competition’s winners, but most exciting for me was an interview with the stunning Tucker Knox. Tucker Knox was virtually a professional dancer before auditioning for SYTYCD. His auditions seemed effortless, and the accolades…
Category: Finding Balance blog
So You Think You Can Dance?
Older dancers? Rock the world. See Huffington Post-syndicated column: http://www.4dancers.org/2013/05/older-dancers/ But so do the younger dancers. For example… I am a huge fan of SYTYCD, I admit it. I am a fan of dancers who, outside their training and comfort zone, can conform to whatever dance style is demanded of them — with both grace…
Reality Dance, Theatrical Dance
I freely admit I have very wide-ranging tastes in dance. To me, spring and summer dance has been beguiling. So You Think You Can Dance? I was hooked – from the auditions in Vegas to the theatrical finales. I’m still outraged about the elimination of Malice early on – not an America’s favorite, but arguably…
Olivier Wevers and Whim W’him
In May, Whim W’him presented new works by artistic director Olivier Wevers and PNB’s Andrew Bartee, the Seattle premiere of L’Effleure by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and a showing of Wevers’ Fragments, originally created for Spectrum Dance. Bartee’s flair for choreography is easily seen in his This is Real. Set in a recording studio, the dance features frenzied…
Li Chiao Ping in Vancouver
Last month, Dance Critics Association/World Dance Alliance-America combined to offer conference meetings and performances at the beautiful Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver. I participated as a panel moderator, with PNB’s Doug Fullington, looking at what gets produced and presented, and why. What goes into decisions about company programming? Considerations that are perhaps not so obvious to…
Seattle’s PNB: Where dance science and dance aesthetics meet
Don Quixote represents the impossible dream in a number of ways — in classical ballet, it carries the most demanding of roles for the endless tricks and the merciless stamina demands (especially with big jumps, hopping on pointe, and the wickedly fast speed requirements). Buried in the pyrotechnics, though, is the most lovely of moves….
PNB’s New Works — and a dancer’s test of endurance
A Million Kisses to my Skin (David Dawson), Cylindrical Shadows (Annabelle Lopez Ochoa), and Mating Theory (Victor Quijada) showcased Pacific Northwest Ballet dancers extraordinaire in the March program in Seattle. Virtually all lead dancers were featured in this program with big (and much) dancing. The dancers’ remarkable development showed. Dawson’s piece is pure delight —…
Cast the First Rock
Yet another three new dance creations from Whim W’him’s Olivier Wevers this past January at Seattle’s Intiman Theater (the company is in residence there) — extraordinary, memorable, provocative work. What does this groundbreaking choreographer offer? Haunting music, images of the brave and the broken, wild women and ritualistic or stylized violence. ThrOwn is plain chilling…
So You Think You Can Dance
So You Think You Can Dance? Choreograph, Too? Each week I watch So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD), sometimes with morbid fascination – how can these dancers keep on going without getting injured? What clever things are the judges going to say? How emotional can this show get? Especially in the play-offs each week?…
“Interesting” Dancers
Interesting dancers Common wisdom/practice among arts critics is to avoid the adjective “interesting” – probably because it is so vague and ambiguous. Meaning everything, it means nothing. Maybe. I think if we take it to mean “singularly worth watching,” “a different sort of dancer worth watching,” or “a dancer you have to watch”…meaning, your attention…