Have you ever seen a dancer sneeze during a performance? Me neither. There must be some logical scientific explanation, but absent that, I’m guessing because they’re in a state of extreme focus. Whereas if you’re relaxed and just going about daily life, you’re at the mercy of involuntary actions like sneezing or coughing. Or when […]

Raimund Hoghe’s Sans-titre, a collaboration with Faustin Linyekula at DTW through Sep 18, is contemplative, clinical, sentimental, absorbing. Its long passages of taskmaking challenge one’s patience. Yet they also add to the formal, rarefied atmosphere of the spartan, black-draped theater, punctuated by a lone candle flame upstage. Everything is slowed down and reduced to its […]

I’ll admit it—I have the attention span of a flea, painstakingly cultivated from years of tv, multi-tasking, and computer work. So when I sat down to watch Brian Rogers’ and Madeline Best’s Selective Memory at the Chocolate Factory last night (through Sep 18), it took a whole lot of concentration to watch the first 20 […]

In this quieter week, it’s worth taking a deep breath and looking at some notable events approaching in the the next couple of months. The French Institute’s festival, Crossing the Line (Sep 10 – 27) has evolved into one of the fall’s significant resources of cutting edge performance, French or not. One of the keystones, […]

Recently, I mentioned somewhat felicitously that if I were stuck on a desert island, Mark Morris’ L’Allegro would be one of the dances I’d want with me. I received an enthusiastic response to the (admittedly absurd) idea, so I figured I’d post the first installment of my list and ask people to post theirs as […]

In the New York dance world, August means rest—very little happens on the familiar stages. But you can sample a number of outdoor performances, as well as the New York Downtown Dance Festival, and some presentations in the sprawling Fringe Festival. So the Joyce Theater’s presentation of four choreographers in early August came as a […]

Compared to the rest of the year in New York, August’s dance schedule is slender. But you wouldn’t know that last week, as both Paul Taylor Dance Company and Mark Morris Dance Group invaded Lincoln Center—the first outdoors, in the Damrosch Bandshell, free; the second in the cooler confines of the David H. Koch “I […]

A 16th birthday symbolizes a point in one’s life when big changes are sure to follow. Less pivotal (if nonetheless a major milestone) is one’s 80th birthday, but sure enough, on this occasion for choreographer Paul Taylor, revolution is positively rife in a free, celebratory program tonight at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, at 7:30pm […]