- Joan Acocella: David Hallberg in Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
David Hallberg, of American Ballet Theatre, has spent a lot of time in “prince” roles. You can see why. He is six feet one and blindingly handsome, and also—a rare feature—extremely sweet. That’s nice, but you have to wonder: Is there a . . ....
- Joan Acocella: Lucinda Childs’s “Dance,” at the Joyce.
This past July, at Bard College, Lucinda Childs revived her famous minimalist piece “Dance,” from 1979. For an hour, the dancers cross the stage on a grid, mostly in unison, in a repetition-with-variation pattern that mimics the bargello weave of the Philip Glass score. Over the . . ....
- Joan Accocella: Dana Reitz’s “Necessary Weather,” at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
8220;Necessary Weather” (1994), a show about lighting and movement, was dreamed up by Dana Reitz, a brainy postmodern choreographer. She then made the piece in collaboration with Jennifer Tipton, America’s premier lighting designer, and Sara Rudner, a widely loved dancer. The lighting design is more virtuosic . . ....
- Joan Acocella: Michael Blackwood’s “New York Dance: States of Performance.”
If you’ve ever come out of a dance concert wondering what those people thought they were doing, you should see Michael Blackwood’s new film, “New York Dance: States of Performance,” in which seven highly regarded choreographers—Beth Gill, Christopher Wheeldon, Ann Liv Young . . ....
- Race @ Ethel Barrymore Theatre
Ruthlessness of a rhetorical kind is part of the fun of David Mamet’s new play (directed by the author), his latest exercise in contrarian provocation. “Do you know what you can say? To a black man. On the subject of race?” Henry Brown (David Alan Grier), a black lawyer, says to Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas), a rich, white potential client who is accused of raping...
- Joan Acocella: Doris Humphrey at “Dance
on Camera.”
In Doris Humphrey’s work, as in much of early-twentieth-century modern dance, there’s a lot of scarf-waving, to show us the aspirations of the human spirit, but Humphrey’s choreography looks far less dated than her contemporaries’, because, as her biographer Marcia . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Joan Acocella: Doris Humphrey at “Dance
on Camera.”
In Doris Humphrey’s work, as in much of early-twentieth-century modern dance, there’s a lot of scarf-waving, to show us the aspirations of the human spirit, but Humphrey’s choreography looks far less dated than her contemporaries’, because, as her biographer Marcia . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Movies: Spring Preview.
goatTitle-->COMIC TRIPS
Russell Brand stars as the liberated heir in the remake of “Arthur” (April 8), featuring Helen Mirren as Hobson, his valet, and Greta Gerwig as the free-spirited woman he loves. Jason Winer directs. | David Gordon Green directs James Franco, Natalie Portman, and Zooey . . ....
- Joan Acocella: The “World of Tap Dance,” festival, at the CUNY Graduate Center.
The “World of Tap Dance” festival, which will take place July 6-7 at the CUNY Graduate Center, is a celebration of tap on film, a phenomenon that started when the talkies did. Before then, tap wasn’t recorded; indeed, the same has often been true since then . . ....
- Joan Acocella: Natalia Makarova at “Dance on Camera.”
However fiery and proud they may seem onstage, ballet dancers are humble people, at least in the sense that they go back to school every day. On Jan. 27, the “Dance on Camera” festival at the Walter Reade will screen a film, “Makarova: In a Class of . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Joan Acocella: Mark Morris’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.”
Mark Morris’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato” (1988), based on poems by Milton and paintings by Blake, and set to an oratorio by Handel, is widely considered one of the great dance works of the twentieth century. In the course of its thirty . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Dance Fall Preview
goatTitle-->POINTILLISM
New York City Ballet presents masterpieces by George Balanchine (“Apollo,” “Episodes,” and “Jewels”) at the David H. Koch (Sept. 13-Oct. 9), but the big deal of the season is “Ocean’s Kingdom,” with music by Paul McCartney . . ....
- Hilton Als: David Henry Hwang’s “Chinglish” review.
First-generation American writers often have two stories to tell. There’s the story of their inspiration and the quest for a discipline to give form to their imaginings. Then there’s a more constricted tale: the arrival myth. How did my parents get here from Hungary or . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Goings on About Town: This Week
The Theatre
CLOWNING AROUND
Mark Rylance, last seen here in “Boeing-Boeing,” returns to Broadway in David Hirson’s comedy “La Bête,” also directed by Matthew Warchus. David Hyde Pierce and Joanna Lumley star as well, at the Music Box.
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- Joan Acocella: Frederick Wiseman’s “Ballet” at MOMA.
In Frederick Wiseman’s “Ballet” (1995), a documentary on American Ballet Theatre, Agnes de Mille, in a wheelchair, rehearses her final piece, “The Other.” “You must look like something that’s absolutely broken, and stuck up in the wind,” she tells Amanda . . ....
- Joan Acocella: A short film of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes appears online.
For about a century, it has been said that there are no known films of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes onstage. As of last month, that is no longer the case. A short film of the company dancing “Les Sylphides” in 1928 has been found on the Internet . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Joan Acocella: John Kelly’s “Find My Way Home.”
Press releases and reviews are always telling us how our savviest artists “deconstruct” the things of the past: take them apart and reveal their wrong, wrong assumptions. In fact, when today’s artists do adaptations of “Romeo and Juliet” or Martha Graham, it’s . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Goings on About Town: Dance
goatTitle-->NEW YORK CITY BALLET
The industrious Benjamin Millepied—who created the dance sequences for Darren Aronofsky’s ballet-noir film “Black Swan”—premières his latest ballet, “Plainspoken,” set to a commissioned score by David Lang, at the Oct. 7 . . ....
- Joan Acocella: Hilary Mantel reconsiders the life of Thomas Cromwell.
In the Living Hall of the Frick Collection, on either side of a fireplace, there are portraits by Hans Holbein of the two most illustrious politicians of the court of Henry VIII. On the left is Sir Thomas More, Henry’s lord chancellor from 1529 to 1532, who, when . . ....
- Joan Acocella: Sofie Krog Teater’s “The House,” at HERE.
8220;All this will be mine!” exclaims Flora, gazing around at the nice, big funeral home she lives in. It’s the property of her husband’s aunt, Mrs. Esperanza, but Flora plans to fix that. What she needs is to get her lunkhead husband to do . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Joan Acocella: Robert Battle and the Alvin Ailey troupe after “Revelations.”
The dancers of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre are thrilling, and the dances they do are mostly sentimental and conventional. There are exceptions, notably the company’s signature work, “Revelations” (1960), set to spirituals. This piece is relentlessly programmed by the Ailey troupe. During the present season . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Joan Acocella: Croce and Mueller on Fred and Ginger.
Arlene Croce’s “The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book” (1972) not only anatomized the dance routines that the peerless couple performed in their movies. It also taught readers how to understand dance itself, a rare skill—indeed, a rare ambition—at that time. The . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Joan Acocella: Croce and Mueller on Fred and Ginger.
Arlene Croce’s “The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book” (1972) not only anatomized the dance routines that the peerless couple performed in their movies. It also taught readers how to understand dance itself, a rare skill—indeed, a rare ambition—at that time. The . . . (Subscription required.)...
- David Denby: “44 Inch Chest” and “Police, Adjective.”
The new British movie “44 Inch Chest” is a very strange, often terrible affair that is nevertheless mesmerizing, in a limited way. Five of the best actors in England have been handed a ranting, foulmouthed script by Louis Mellis and David Scinto, the same vituperative pair who wrote . . ....
- Joan Acocella: Sets from Balanchine, at the Drawing Center.
Balanchine didn’t care much about the visual arts. There’s a story that Lincoln Kirstein, who founded New York City Ballet with him, once invited him to go to a museum. “No thanks,” Balanchine said. “I’ve been to a museum.” Today . . ....
- Joan Acocella: “Smut,” “Lightning Rods,” “House of Holes: A Book of Raunch” reviews.
We are often told that, in art, sex must keep a few veils on in order to be sexy. That’s certainly not true in painting—there are many nudes that make the heart beat faster—but in literature the rule generally does apply. One of the . . ....
- Tad Friend: “Arrested Development”’s David Cross moves to Dumbo.
After nearly eleven years in the East Village, the actor and comedian David Cross was moving on up to Dumbo. As he headed out to take the F train to his new crib, carrying a tape measure to help him determine where his stuff would go, he explained, “I . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Joan Acocella: Mark Morris’s “Four Saints in Three Acts,” at BAM.
Sometimes sophistication looks like naïveté. Gertrude Stein’s text for the mini-opera “Four Saints in Three Acts” is both stylish and childlike, like so much of her work. Ditto Virgil Thomson’s score, simultaneously Frenchy and American, with snatches of rags and . . . (Subscription required.)...
