Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival 2019 Archives

Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival 2019

Blak Whyte Gray (Boy Blue)

August 5, 2019

Co-conceived by Asante and Kenrik “H2O” Sandy who choreographed and directed the production, "Blak Whyte Gray" was constructed in two parts and three sections. Part I began with “Whyte,” danced by Ricardo Da Silva, Gemma Kay Hoddy and Nicole McDowall dressed in variations on straitjackets. (Sleek, pale, layered costumes by Ryan Dawson Laight.) All three were trapped in a rectangle of light which gradually shrunk making their already frantic movements even more so. The music boomed as they vibrated, twisted, pulsated and stopped with dramatic suddenness. This was desperation of the highest order. [more]

Mark Morris Dance Group 2019: “Sport”

July 12, 2019

The world premiere “Sport,” choreographed to more than twenty bits and pieces by Erik Satie, appropriately named “Sports et divertissements” (played by the brilliant pianist Colin Fowler), was a not very exciting examination of every competitive sport from golf to sailing to swimming to running to tennis to etc. Dressed in Elizabeth Kurtzman’s colorful one-piece overalls, the cast of twelve imitated in both exaggerated and subtle ways these activities, sometimes in silence and sometimes to the Satie music. Morris is imaginative enough to turn athletics into dance, but the work was simply too episodic and disjointed even with his use of repeated motifs—like dancers being dragged across the stage on large swaths of cloth—to give the work some unity and form. The end result was more of beautifully crafted mime than a full-fledged ballet. [more]