The light seems to drip down planes that are the front and back of Andrew Bartee, at the outset of L’Effleuré. Lighting designer Michael Mazzola catches Bartee from all angles throughout the course of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s dance piece, whether “elastic technician” Bartee is soaring in a leap or sinking to his haunches in a grand plié, pulsing slightly to a rhythm like breathing or heartbeat. Continue reading A Third-Degree Slow Burn, at Whim W’Him
“I Don’t Remember A Spark” features some newer faces for the company (Lara Seefeldt, Mia Monteabaro, Sergey Kheylik), and though it’s often light-hearted, it includes an intense pas de deux between Tory Peil (who, to continue the floral theme, seems really to be blossoming in Wevers company) and Bartee. Continue reading Whim W’Him’s Back with Flowers & Shadows for a Weekend Run
The only question about Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Modern Masterpieces program (at McCaw Hall through March 24) is at which point your soul may incandesce. My instinct is that this is likely to occur in the second half, during Ulysses Dove’s Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven or Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, with its spectacular use of the “fog of minimalism.” Continue reading PNB’s Modern Masterpieces Lives Up to the Hype
Morris at times uses the stage as a sort of scrolling score, with dancers leaping in from the wings to dance a phrase, and leaping back off when it’s done. The synchronization is so acute that when, suddenly, a line of male dancers jetés diagonally across the stage through a second group of dancers, it generates a strongly visceral thrill. Continue reading First Glance at Mark Morris’s Kammermusik No. 3 (and More) at PNB
No one needs to tell choreographer Olivier Wevers that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. On the same bill with his death penalty dance, thrOwn, this weekend at the Intiman, are two lighter works: la langue de l’amour, a “very naughty” solo for Chalnessa Eames; and Flower Festival, with August Bournonville’s flirtatious, teasing pas de deux, Flower Festival in Genzano, re-imagined for two men who begin the dance in suits, but then there arises a “jousting” feeling, says Wevers, promising very “kinetic” movement. Continue reading For Whim W’Him’s Olivier Wevers, A New Dance is Life or Death
