A weekly, highly personal and subjective list of performances and artists we want you to know about:
Leigh says:
Winter in Boston can freeze your scrod off. But if you get out of town to see no other dance this year, make it for Boston Ballet’s production of William Forsythe’s 1984 full-length “Artifact.” An excerpted suite is danced by San Francisco Ballet, Pennsylvania or others, but the full version is more rewarding. It incorporates text that’s almost nonsense (“What do you think I meant?” “I know I said sand but I meant rocks.”) yet amplifies the choreographic themes of perception, memory and the survival of art. Forsythe’s pretensions brought him into a period where you wished he’d shut up and dance, but “Artifact” nails the balance between intellectual force and kinesthetic thrill. This must-see ballet is the greatest of the post-Balanchine/Ashton/Tudor interregnum. Starting February 23 and running through March 5.
This is Boston rehearsing the opening of one of the main dance sections:
Also check out this promo for the London run of the ballet in ‘12. It shows what makes the full-length version different from the pure dance suite.
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A joint performance by ABT Studio Company and The Royal Ballet School is a chance to compare and contrast the cream of the crop of two major schools. ABT’s kids will perform works by Dana Genshaft, Marcelo Gomes and Ethan Stiefel; The Royal’s charges will dance ballets by Ashton, MacMillan and Helgi Tomasson. To ice the cake, the two schools will join forces in a premiere by Liam Scarlett. Here’s a report on the performances in ’15.
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Martha says:
Matthew Rogers wasn’t just a face in the crowd within Tere O’Connor’s company; he brought a deep energy that made him recognizable and present individually. Rogers will present his own work, “A Fragile Son,” at JACK in Brooklyn from February 9 – 12. He is now based in Slovakia, where he assembled a performance art solo about the experience of “contextualizing his body in a new foreign home.” In a world in which being foreign seems more dangerous — and fragile — than ever, his exploration of vulnerability within a strange community takes on an added immediacy.
Cover: “Artifact.” Photo © Dieter Schwer.
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