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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Molissa Fenley and Dancers
Performance Details
Joyce Theater
December 11 - 16, 2007"
Molissa Fenley Celebrates 30 Years of Nonstop Dancing"
"When Molissa Fenley formed a small company in 1977, many people had taken to jogging in a big way, as if they wanted to be fit enough to outrun enemy attacks, natural disasters, and the aging of their own bodies. Fenley's patterned, repetitive, aerobically paced dances responded to that image of a fit human being. When she began to focus entirely on solos, she slowed her pulse to track more introspective paths, yet remained tireless." Read review...
8:27 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Nugent + Matteson Dance
Pieced Apart - Performance Details
Danspace Project
December 6 - 8, 2007
"Together and Apart: Nugent + Matteson get mysterious, enjoy block shoes"
"Jennifer Nugent and Paul Matteson are nothing like the sleek couples of ballet who often look as though they'd been bred to channel petty royalty. Nugent is a strong, long-bodied space-eater who moves with a lavish plasticity. Matteson--slim, loose, and wily--can articulate a shoulder, a hip, his head in innumerable slippery ways. He's syrup; she's honey." Read review...
8:21 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Alan Good Dance
Omnibus - Performance Details
New Dance Group
December 7 - 9, 2007
"Same Differently for Alan Good's Omnibus: Now you see it, now you see it again"
"I've always been impressed by choreographers who not only want us to experience dancing in an unusual way, but want us to understand how that new vision is coming about. Without being didactic, they nudge us with subliminal instructions, like "Watch what happens when I repeat this to different music, when I run it backward, when I have the dancers face a different direction, when I change the audience-performer relationship, when I create a picture too complex for you to grasp in its entirety."" Read review...
8:13 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
DancenOw|NYC
Doug Elkins
The Return of Fraulein Maria - Performance Details
Joe's Pub at The Public Theater
December 12 - 15, 2007
"The Thrills Are Alive: Alert Julie Andrews! Doug Elkins brings Fraulein Maria back to Joe's Pub"
"New Yorkers are going to be very happy when Fraulein Maria, polished up and with additional recruits, returns to Joe's Pub on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday (and again on January 12). A couple of years ago, when Elkins was coping with the breakup of his marriage and the dissolution of his dance company, he popped in a DVD and watched The Sound of Music with his son Liam." Read review...
6:44 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
James Thierree
Au Revoir Parapluie - Performance Details
Brooklyn Academy of Music
December 4-16, 2007 (Check dates)
"James Thiérrée's Au Revoir Parapluie: Seeking a missing lover through dream countries"
"As demonstrated in his magical Au Revoir Parapluie, James Thiérrée's imagination is tethered to reality only by the frailest of golden threads. This brilliant director, dancer, mime, acrobat, and musician has barely touched down on the Orpheus legend." Read review...
6:37 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Program Details
New York City Center
November 28 - December 31, 2007
"Flaming Creatures: If it's Christmas, it must be Ailey time"
"In many ways, Béjart's ultra-clear choreographic patterns remind me of early modern dance. In a close phalanx, moving as one, the nine dancers (both male and female) shift directions suddenly to gaze into threatening darkness; leap, spin, and crawl into contrapuntal squads or solo outbursts; and thrust fists in the air. The male firebird has the flashy, more balletic dancing--the exalted jumps, the beating of feet together in the air." Read review...
6:31 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Beth Gill / Daniel Linehan
Eleanor & Eleanor / Not About Everything
Dance Theater Workshop
November 28 - December 1, 2007
"Space Flights: Two imaginative young choreographers test boundaries"
"In their shared program, Beth Gill and Daniel Linehan force us to experience space--its emptiness, its fullness-- both visually and sensually, and to feel the weight and passage of time. Both have been choreographing for only a few years, but the intelligence and daring with which they explore their ideas make a lot of the dances that we see today look unconsidered." Read review...
9:31 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Pappa Tarahumara
Ship In A View - Performance Details
BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
November 28 - December 1, 2007
"Going Nowhere Beautifully: Do you always have to understand what you see?"
"Hiroshi Koike named his company Pappa Tarahumara after a Mexican Indian tribe. He has made dance-theater works based on Chekhov's The Three Sisters and a Gabriel García Márquez story, but his Ship in a View is anchored only in his own imagination and his seaside hometown in Japan." Read review...
1:59 PM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Ballet Hispanico
Palladium Nights and Repertory
Joyce Theater
November 27 - December 9, 2007
"The Latin '50s: Palladium Nights tries to resurrect an NYC club scene"
"In the 1950s, you could hang out on West 52nd Street and drop into one jazz club after another. The Palladium at Broadway and 53rd featured Latin bands headed by greats like Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, and Machito...Ballet Hispanico director Tina Ramirez seeks to recreate this atmosphere in Palladium Nights." Read review...
10:37 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Pennsylvania Ballet
Performance Details
New York City Center
November 14-18, 2007
"Runway Project:Carl Orff gets a Matthew Neenan Makeover"
"This must be Matthew Neenan's Carmina Burana. The orchestra...are certainly delivering Carl Orff's ringing, thunderous music, but although press materials tell me that Neenan "envisions a simple, universal, and sensual look for the production," the first-class dancers of the Pennsylvania Ballet are performing the kind of nightmare I imagine Tim Gunn having." Read review...
6:51 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Yvonne Rainer
RoS Indexical - Performance Details
Performa 07
Hudson Theater
November 18-19, 2007
"Rite in Progress: Yvonne Rainer Jumps Over Two Sets of Decades"
"RoS Indexical, commissioned by Performa 07 for its three-week art fest, is a double palimpsest rooted in Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, as choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Rainer focuses on the 1913 Paris premiere, during which spectators scandalized by Stravinsky's dissonances and Nijinsky's primitivism yelled their disapproval and were shushed, even punched, by partisans." Read review...
6:41 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Douglas Dunn & Dancers
Nothing Further - Program Details
Dance New Amsterdam
November 8-11, 2007
"Time Trip with Douglas Dunn & Dancers"
"I've followed Dunn's work for a long time, admiring his inventiveness, his intelligence, his daring, and his wit. He's a magnificent maverick...Nothing Further elegantly conveys the range of his imagination and craft." Read review...
9:08 AM - Permalink
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Deborah Jowitt / The Village Voice
Monica Bill Barnes & Company
Suddenly Summer Somewhere - Performance Detials
Danspace Project
November 8-10, 2007
"Monica Bill Barnes & Company's Frank Acts"
A performance by Monica Bill Barnes puts strange thoughts into my head. Do I want to take her home and sit her on a sofa so her big eyes can follow me around and keep my life from feeling humdrum? Read review...
8:25 AM - Permalink
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