Brooklyn Academy of Music

The Look of Love (Mark Morris Dance Group)

March 27, 2024

"The Look of Love" was filled with Morris’ least complex choreography, relying on repetition, walking, running and soft leg extensions along with simple arm gestures. Considering the sophistication and elegance of Iverson’s arrangements for the MMDG Music Ensemble, Morris, whose musicianship is his best feature, clearly decided to go for the obvious and easily digestible. Nothing wrong with this approach, but it made "The Look of Love" appear less substantial than it really was. [more]

Our Class

January 26, 2024

Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s "Our Class" is epic in its storytelling and shocking in its specifics. At three hours, the play is never long or boring as every line of dialogue offers new details to be digested as ten lives are laid out for us. While rather busy Igor Golyak’s production is always illuminating, always compelling. The cast of ten mostly young actors, many unfamiliar to New York audiences, are always riveting as they tell their individual and intertwining stories. What may be most shocking is that in Jan Gross’ prose account in his 2001 book "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwadne, Poland" he reveals was that this is not the only Polish town in which these atrocities against the Jews took place. One realizes why the world premiere of "Our Class" took place in Great Britain and not Poland. [more]

ON THE TOWN WITH CHIP DEFFAA… WITH MATTHEW BRODERICK, HARVEY MILK, AND HARRY HOUDINI….

June 28, 2023

As a lover of the performing arts, I’ll remember this month as when I witnesseed Matthew Broderick give one of the finest, subtlest performances of his career. I’ll remember, too, the uplifting idealism of Andrew Lippa’s I Am Harvey Milk. But I’ll also remember this as the month that some major cultural institutions were forced to make significant cutbacks because audiences have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. And that is worrisome. [more]

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Spring 2023 Season

June 11, 2023

"Dancing Spirit" was a gentle ballet choreographed by Ronald K. Brown to a suite of music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Radiohead and War. First one dancer, then two and then the entire cast slowly made their way down a darkly lit diagonal (perfect lighting by Clifton Taylor) dressed in Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya’s white flowing dresses for the women and dark pants and pale shirts for the men. This was a ritualistic journey. The simple movements—walking, tilting, dipping into deep, wide pliés and bending at the waist—were developed into complex combinations all to quiet music of Ellington. [more]

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: Água

March 19, 2023

"Água," making its American debut, created in 2001 during a residency in Brazil, is a work of great beauty, humor and creativity —and dishearteningly, an overlong dance/theater work. Even the most beloved visitor who overstays his welcome, enervates rather than stimulates. Its series of discrete sections never congealed into a seamless whole, each, though fascinatingly staged and performed by this impeccable troupe, not making much sense even in the surreal world of Bausch’s imagination. As usual, Bausch combined speaking with movement, not pairing them particularly smoothly in this work. Água actually began with a dancer speaking as she peeled and ate an orange, going on about a muscle cramp that caused her to leave her bed and gaze at the heavens through her window. [more]

Cyrano de Bergerac

April 19, 2022

Playwright Martin Crimp, an adherent of the ”in-yer-face” school of British playwriting, has taken Edmond Rostand’s turn-of-the-last century verse drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, and not only blown off the cobwebs but exploded it into an entirely new 21st century experience. Staged by innovative director Jamie Lloyd, it has become a showcase for titanic Scottish stage and screen actor James McAvoy making an unforgettable New York stage debut in the title role as the 17th century poet and soldier. [more]

The Medium

March 22, 2022

Who knew that Marshall McLuhan was such a nut? "The Medium," a dance-theater work conceived and directed by Anne Bogart puts McLuhan through her particular way of combining dance and words and the outcome was silly and brilliant at the same time. First performed in 1993, "The Medium" was revived at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAM Fisher where five members of the experimental SITI Company were put through their manic paces attempting to explicate the McLuhan’s “medium is the message” philosophy in a series of pointed, surreal skits. Bogart updated the media references to include all the electronic/internet variations. [more]

Four Quartets

February 14, 2022

In her selection of the movements and structure of "Four Quartets," Tamowitz chose to ignore the depth and imagery of the poems, producing a cool Merce Cunningham-like ballet that glided along beautifully on the surface of Eliot’s heavy, sometimes distasteful, imagery. Movements were balletic, full of arabesques, skittery connecting steps, soft leaps and jumps. She built the work upon a series of steps and phrases that are repeated in various ways: jumped, turned, performed alone, performed in unison and performed in reverse. One salient image was that of a dancer jumping into the arms of another. Other than that there was very little touching. The barefoot dancers often mimicked each other or performed side by side. Only two duets occurred, one quite long near the end, watched by the other cast members gathered at the corners of the set. [more]

The Hard Nut

December 22, 2015

"The Hard Nut" is certainly beautiful to behold, its production design based on the work of Charles Burns whose graphic novels feature vividly surreal and haunting images. But, it’s also frustratingly erratic—slow at some points, confusing in others—and shtick-laden, with silliness too often overriding beauty and romance. The brilliantly witty sets and inventive costumes by Adrianne Lobel and the late Martin Pakledinaz, respectively, are totally in synch with Morris’ wickedly camp mentality. Indeed, they are a show in themselves, beautiful and witty in equal measures. [more]

Circa: Opus

November 12, 2015

The sobriquet “tricks” is probably not a fair or adequate description of the acrobatic feats these fourteen gymnasts displayed. Their tours de force included: balancing upon each others’ shoulders like giant totem poles; forming arches in backbends upon which others balanced; hanging precariously from ropes and stretches of cloth; and forming impossibly balanced sculptures. They hung off each other. They rolled on the floor and on each other. They formed lines and circles that communicated a certain sense of communal camaraderie, but little else. Gender didn’t seem to matter: women did as much lifting as the men. [more]

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet: Program A

June 9, 2015

The Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet has had the good fortune to have had financial security during its twelve-year existence; that is, until this year when its patron withdrew her support. The troupe’s short season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music was its swan song, but a spectacular one. Alexandra Damiani, CLCB’s artistic director, assembled two programs, the first of which I attended. It was typical of the work identified with the company: slick, technically demanding and impeccably danced. [more]