The Guggenheim Works & Process Emotion & Motion program on Feb 14 & 15 featured two top-ranking dancers (étoiles) from the Paris Opera Ballet—Clairemarie Osta and Mathieu Ganio—performing three ballet excerpts, plus the speaker Dr. Helen Fisher. Works & Process events usually trace a theme elucidated in dance performance excerpts, or preview an upcoming performance, or the work of one or more choreographers. This program, timed for Valentine’s Day, oddly felt more like a variety show than a unified presentation, with unrelated dance segments breaking up blocks of Dr. Fisher’s more conventional, if interesting, lecture. read more
The Guggenheim’s Works & Process series has evolved into a commissioning entity producing some fascinating new work. Until recent years, it was more akin to a lecture/demo format, with a casual atmosphere where the dancers wore rehearsal clothes. It often featured excerpts of works that would be seen elsewhere, on a larger stage; some events still follow this format. But as the fall season’s inaugural show featuring choreography by Peter Quanz and Larry Keigwin demonstrated, it is capable of producing some inspired new choreographic work.
The program last weekend, Steve Reich Interpreted, featured dances set to the same Reich composition, Double Sextet (2007). Peter Quanz, of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, created the ballet In Tandem that seemed to stretch the physical limits of the distinctive, if oddball, theater at the Guggenheim, which is all circles, and quite small at that. read more
Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Arvo Pärt’s compositions rank among the most inspirational for choreographers, at least in my neck of the woods. Reich and Glass are beloved for their muscular propulsiveness, their vigorous rhythms, their hypnotic threads. But it is Pärt’s compositions that invite collaborators into a shared space, a helium-filled elysium, or on Earth — in the earth, rich with dirt, minerals and other creatures. The Guggenheim Works & Process series focused on Pärt as a muse for artist Sophie Calle, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, and another composer, Tarik O’Regan.
Wheeldon, artistic director of Morphoses, has done some of his finest work to Pärt, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that NYCB ballerina Wendy Whelan — another of Wheeldon’s muses — is usually the star. Two duets done for NYCB were performed at the Guggenheim: Liturgy (2003), featuring Whelan with Albert Evans, and the pas de deux from After the Rain, which she danced with Sébastien Marcovici. read more
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