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In 1990, Amelia Rudolph was hiking through Tuolumne Meadows, a stunning mountain pass in Yosemite National Park, when she had an epiphany on a shiny granite bluff: “Could you make a performance here?” she wondered. “Could you dance on a cliff?” Rudolph, a dancer in the Bay Area who trained with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, … Read more
In one of the first signs of collective pushback to the Trump administration’s arts initiatives, several hundred American artists are calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to roll back restrictions on grants to institutions with programming that promotes diversity or “gender ideology.” Among the 463 writers, poets, dancers, visual artists and others … Read more
If there were a want ad for resident dance supervisor to “The Lion King,” it might read something like this: Must be able to work 10-hour days, seven days a week; to manipulate 200 puppets and walk on stilts; to wrangle 52 performers and remember every move in the two-and-a-half-hour show. Candidate must also have … Read more
Like many ambitious artists, the British choreographer Akram Khan can confuse impact with magnitude. His opera-house productions often suffer from bloat. Even if he didn’t have personal connections to the Indian epic the Mahabharata — he appeared in Peter Brook’s mammoth production while a teenager — the subject might have tempted him by its sheer … Read more
On a recent evening in the East Village, the dancers Kris Lee and AJ Wilmore careened across a studio, grappling and colliding with each other. Their limbs butted and interlocked; one dancer’s head burrowed into the other’s stomach. Sometimes what looked like fighting morphed into play, or the two ambled off on their own before … Read more
Broadway OPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect … Read more
It was the night after President Trump had officially taken over the Kennedy Center and made himself its chairman, and two well-dressed Washington women were wandering along the plush red carpet inside its Grand Foyer, so grand it could fit the Washington Monument laid on its side. They reached the eight-foot-tall bronze head of John … Read more
Ashley Bouder has grit, and that’s good. Since the pandemic, this New York City Ballet principal has been dealing with a lot: injuries, weight issues and sporadic performance opportunities. They have fueled one another. There was the time she tore her plantar fascia onstage during a performance of “Western Symphony.” She made a full recovery, … Read more
Dancers, vibrantly attired and nearly floating, skipped across the gallery floor at the Whitney Museum of American Art. With what at first seemed like a bow to the floor but was really a slow slide, they lowered with willful splendor into the splits. Their arms drifted out to either side with steely resolve to the … Read more
The Martha Graham Dance Company, one of New York’s most storied troupes, will celebrate its centenary next year. And for its birthday it has lined up a momentous gift: a gleaming new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. The company announced on Friday that it would leave its offices in the West Village of Manhattan and relocate … Read more