Jalet, who choreographed Luca Guadagnino’s horror movie “Suspiria,” knew Saldaña only from the movie “Avatar.” When he discovered “Center Stage,” he grasped that she would take movement seriously. “It was such an amazing relief to feel that, “Oh, she’s a dancer,” he said. In the original conception, Saldaña had just one dance scene: Rita walks … Read more
“L’ Embarquement pour Cythère,” a 1717 painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau, depicts lovers having a party on an island. They are paired off near a statue of Venus, with encouraging Cupids flying about. Douglas Dunn’s new dance shares a title with the painting, along with some of its pastoral charm and idealization of the past. But … Read more
Elegance has a way of pouring out of Miriam Miller. Her arms open like wings, her fingertips part like petals. At 5 foot 10, with long legs and an elastic back, she has the kind of line that goes on for days. But a body isn’t everything in ballet. What makes Miller so striking isn’t … Read more
Lourdes Lopez, the longtime artistic director of Miami City Ballet, who championed new ballets and helped to elevate the company’s artistic profile, will step down from her post at the end of this season, two years before her contract expires, the company announced on Wednesday. Lopez, 66, who joined the company in 2012, was originally … Read more
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