Dueling Odiles
[NOTE: I’ve been working on a big long post today but finally abandoned it for now because I just need to take my mind off ugly, depressing things. So I’ve pivoted to this one.] “Swan Lake” is one of those … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Dance
Open thread 11/17/22
A tiny glimpse of one of my favorite ballets of all time: The female soloist is a dancer I’ve not seen before. But as soon as she began to move, I recognized that she’s a dancer of a type I … Continue reading →
Robbins’ “Other Dances”: four different renditions
Compare and contrast. I’ve cued up a very short (less than 2-minute) excerpt from the beginning of each video of the ballet for the purpose of easy comparison, but you can go to YouTube to watch the longer videos if … Continue reading →
The Gramscian march through arts institutions – and arts funding
Some years ago – perhaps ten? – I pretty much stopped going to art museums. Most of the exhibits were no longer of art I wanted to see, and even the ones that seemed promising turned out to be an … Continue reading →
Compare and contrast: three women dance ballet to classical music
The other day the following little ballet to music by Beethoven, set on three women, appeared in my YouTube recommendations. And so I watched it. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t much like it: too static, very “on the … Continue reading →
Open thread 10/3/22
I find this dance style strange yet rather hypnotic. It’s similar to certain other ethnic dance traditions in that it features a fairly rigid upper body with movement centered in the legs and feet. But in this case, the women … Continue reading →
“Aureole” through the years
Here’s one of my two very favorite Paul Taylor works (the other is “Esplanade”). The video is a very short compilation of brief clips from performances over the decades – the piece is now 60 years old. I’ve seen the … Continue reading →
Baryshnikov the Great
I had the enormous good fortune to see Baryshnikov dance in person many many times, and he fully lived up to all the hype. To this day, I have never seen a more exciting and yet Apollonian dancer – an … Continue reading →
Odette’s escape: woman or swan?
I know that’s the burning question you’ve all been asking yourselves for years: was “Swan Lake’s” swan queen Odette a swan, or was she a woman? Did Prince Siegfried actually have an interspecies romance? And I’m here to answer: Odette … Continue reading →
Martine Van Hamel: the greatest Myrtha of them all
Who’s Myrtha, you ask? It’s a role in the famous Romantic ballet “Giselle,” one of the earliest ballets in existence and still performed today. Myrtha is the head honcho of the Wilis, those spirits of dead girls jilted by lovers, … Continue reading →
Open thread 6/11/22
I found these two videos in an old post of mine. They both feature the same well-known pas de deux from the second act of “Swan Lake.” The first video is of Natalia Makarova and Ivan Nagy in 1976, a … Continue reading →
Dance teachers I have known: Natasha Boskovic
[NOTE: This is part of a series I’ve done. So far I’ve featured dance teachers Stanley Holden and Finis Jhung. There are plenty more I could write about.] Last night I was musing about the changes in dance in my … Continue reading →