May 4th, 2008
Senegal, Japan fused into dance
By Merilyn Jackson
For The Inquirer
Japanese-born Kota Yamazaki started his dance company, Fluid hug-hug, not long after moving to New York in 2002. Last year, he won a Bessie Award with Germaine Acogny for choreographing FAGAALA on Compagnie Jant-Bi, which Acogny directs in Senegal.
Interested in researching Butoh, a post-World War II performance art, Acogny visited Japan in 2000, met Butoh-master Yamazaki, and invited him to work with her. He visited three times, teaching her dancers Butoh techniques and immersing himself in Senegalese dance traditions.
Rise:Rose, which also resulted from that research, received its Philadelphia premiere Friday and Saturday at the Painted Bride. Yamazaki danced with Michou Szabo and Mina Nishimura to make a short but engrossing evening of fusion dance fathered by the often grotesque and mysterious Butoh, but mothered by traditional and ancient African steps. Read more…
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May 2nd, 2008
In master’s footsteps, in step with the times
By Ellen Dunkel
For The Inquirer
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and the dancers were in full celebration mode Friday night at the Academy of Music, the 16th stop on a nationwide tour.
They rocked the house.
Headed by artistic director and Philadelphia native Judith Jamison, Ailey is about as accessible as modern dance gets. But in case anyone needed help deciphering the dance, the program listed a phone number one could call during intermission for more information about several of the pieces. Read More…
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April 24th, 2008
Things went a bit rocky for Rock School at the olympics of dance, but dancers hauled in two medals and major scholarships.
By Ellen Dunkel
For The Inquirer
NEW YORK - There were nerves, slips, wardrobe malfunctions, and two major falls. In the end, the 20 students from the Rock School for Dance Education won only two medals at the Youth America Grand Prix finals last weekend - which for the Rock meant a slow year.
But one of them was gold. Read more …
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April 23rd, 2008
Local Dance Group Performs Ballet Focused On Darfur Crisis
by KYW’s Karin Phillips
A South Philadelphia-based dance company is performing what it’s calling the first ever American ballet on the crisis in Darfur.
The Rebecca Davis Dance Company has a history of taking literature and history to the stage through the use of contemporary ballet. But Davis says this ballet — Darfur, designed to reveal the human suffering in a 21st century conflict — is different: Read more…
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April 22nd, 2008
At the Bride, a fruitful union of troupes
By Merilyn Jackson
For The Inquirer
At the Painted Bride last weekend, we got only 20 minutes of evidence of things (un)said, an excerpt from Charles O. Anderson’s work in development that is slated to be premiered by his dance theatre X next year.
The Bride’s stage was too small to hold this rib-thumping, heart-pumping, cry-mercy-Mama dance. A section with six female dancers was too crowded to look cleanly executed, although most of them danced full out. I hope to see it on a larger stage like the Perelman when it is finished.
The other half of the show was a work by Bessie Award-winner Kota Yamazaki called In-Ou, which he mounted on Anderson and three of his stellar dancers. This more intimate, partly Butoh-based piece worked well in the Bride’s black box space. Read more…
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April 22nd, 2008
Much to enjoy in this ‘Coppélia’
By Merilyn Jackson
For The Inquirer
In 1870, Leo Delibes’ score for Coppélia moved ballet music forward and set the stage for Tchaikovsky’s later masterpieces.
Considered a descriptive tone poem, the score may be the main reason for keeping the ballet in active repertory, but there is also much in the Marius Petipa choreography to behold with pleasure. Petipa filled Delibes’ musical cues with group dances - in folk styles like mazurkas and czardas - and then waltzes and delicious virtuoso solo work.
The Pennsylvania Ballet has ideal casts for Coppélia’s three principals, and reprised the comedic ballet again last Friday evening at the Merriam Theater. It runs this Thursday through Sunday. Read more…
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April 8th, 2008
Dance with a German accent
By Merilyn Jackson
For The Inquirer
In October, Susanne Linke - at 63 as lanky and loose as a teenager - arrived at Jeanne Ruddy’s Performance Garage on Brandywine Street for the first two weeks of an eight-week residency.
Ruddy and Linke stand on the shoulders of two giants of 20th-century dance - the American Martha Graham and the German expressionist Mary Wigman, each of whom originated techniques in the 1930s that are still influential. READ MORE…
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April 1st, 2008
Dance beyond the fringe
Passion for a fungus and other avant-garde moves at Temple.
By Ellen Dunkel
For The Inquirer
The calendar says March, not August or September, but Friday night’s performance of SCUBA at Temple’s Conwell Dance Theater looked an awful lot like the Fringe Festival.
Maybe it was the man dressed as a giant stalk of corn, pining for his long-lost fungus. Or the site-specific work minus the site. Or two solos that were more than a little curious. Read more…
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March 29th, 2008
BalletX gets busy with quirky celebration of springBy Ellen Dunkel
For The Inquirer
With spring comes new life.
BalletX’s new work, Right to Spring, celebrates new life in the shape of dancer-artistic director Christine Cox’s midterm-pregnancy belly.
Choreographed by the company’s other artistic director, Matthew Neenan (who is also choreographer in residence at Pennsylvania Ballet), the one-hour Right to Spring is full of quirky little surprises. Read more…
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March 21st, 2008
A young woman who began dancing locally participated in her second charity performance at Rider University, helping to raise funds for an African orphanage. Read more…
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