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
If Christopher Gattelli’s choreography looks familiar, that’s probably the point. A veteran of more than 20 Broadway shows and a devotee of movie musicals, he has an encyclopedic dance brain, a catalog of musical theater references he deploys throughout his work onstage and onscreen. Homage is his calling card. And that makes him a very … Read more
It was at a residency held in 2022 in Kumbakonam, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, that he met the dancers he would cast in “Gigenis.” Four of the seven, including Khoo, specialize in Bharatanatyam, perhaps the most commonly practiced classical form. The youngest, Sirikalyani Adkoli, 18, is an Odissi dancer, a student at … Read more