The Merce app
…ents responding to the art on display. Beacon Events, 2007-2009. Dia Art Foundation, Beacon, NY. From Merce Cunningham: 65 years (Aperture and Cunningham Dance Foundation, 2012). Photo © Stephanie Berger In addition, this app has a wonderful bibliography (expanded from the original book); a list of works; an extensive gallery of images; a small gallery of Cunningham’s drawings; another small gallery of pages from his journals; and several of Cunni…
Momenta. Sydney Dance Company
…t of the choreography. The soundscape came from Nick Wales whose original, commissioned composition incorporated Distant Light by Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. Costumes and set were by Elizabeth Gadsby with assistance from Emma White. The costumes were varied (a little) in style and colour but there was a minimalist quality to them in keeping with the overall abstract quality of the work. Their simplicity gave the dancers every opportunity to sh…
Farewell to a year of dance, 2023
…ce was a deeply moving film-dance testament to the experiences of the profoundly deaf community of Hiroshima 1945. Royal New Zealand Ballet’s mid-year season Lightscapes, had four works with for me the standout Requiem for a Rose by Annabella Lopez-Orcha—a beautiful mysterious meditation, and the powerfully atmospheric Logos by Alice Topp (an RNZB alumna). Their single performance Platinum, was a tribute to 70 years achievement. My enduring memo…
The Australian Ballet’s first New Zealand tour, 1963
…came to nothing. Specific problems arose in Auckland, the first stop. The company was competing with two popular shows, the Cherry Blossom Show and the Black and White Minstrel Show. As the season in Auckland commenced van Eyssen wrote to Haag saying: … Harry Wren’s Cherry Blossom show is splashed across a full page of the daily papers and so far he has sold the first two weeks completely out. Similarly with the Black and White Minstrel Show whic…
Louis Solino (1941–2022)
…ended. He continued free-lance teaching, working with Fleur de Thier’s Rebound dance company in Christchurch and in a number of films, but his talents were absurdly under-used. Jenden’s theatrical output was prolific, and he made roles for Louis wherever possible—in the Hairy Maclary shows, The Gay Fandango, musicals and pantomimes at Circa or Bats, seasons of Fairy Stories (with Jon Trimmer also in the cast)—shows laced with biting satire and hig…
Michel Fokine’s Paganini. Bernard Smith’s unique interpretation
…he desire of the creators, Fokine and Rachmaninoff to hearken back to a Golden Age when there were no class differences and the completely contradictory desire to captivate the hearts (and money) of the bourgeoisie as Paganini did. The second scene is a feudalist-bourgeois conception of the people, of lovers in an ideal pastoral world, where there are no class barriers … The “people” of the second scene are not the mass of the people at all, they…
Douglas Wright—the last dance. Tempo Dance Festival Online video viewing
…ant tree branch is suspended overhead. Trees exist both above and below ground. Douglas always was a dendrophile, so there are echoes for us of his first choreography for RNZBallet, decades ago, The Decay of Lying—and of the later works, A Far Cry and Forever. Here Douglas walks on stage, bare foot, dressed in white pyjama. A uniformed nurse, on standby, watches him closely. She’ll be his first responder. His final gesture has re-shaped to become…
Dance diary. September 2013
…ne, is specialising in aerials and has his eye on work with Circa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsSLRg1bR8E Laura Kmetko, featured on NICA’s 2014 poster below, is specialising in contortion handstands. Following an appearance in the opening number at the Festival mondial de Cirque du Demain in Paris in January 2013 she hopes to pursue her career overseas. https://vimeo.com/71859949 Wayne McGregor As we anticipate Wayne McGregor’s Chroma as part…
Dance diary. January 2014
…segments of footage. Any further information would be most welcome https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy9nJpvZQ9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfcZm9jBKXw P Further information about some of the images in the National Library’s Bodenwieser collection has recently come to light. Those close to Bodenwieser recently identified the ‘unknown dancers’ in some of the Library’s digitised images. The most interesting comments concern a photograph of dancer…
Dance diary. June 2013
…ommercially. Here are Charluet’s clips: https://vimeo.com/27678893 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwMsTizJFfM&feature=player_embedded The unauthorised book about Tankard I still have a few copies of my unauthorised biography, Meryl Tankard: an original voice, available for sale. Ordering details are at the end of this post. The book outlines the story behind Tankard’s magical works. Here are the last couple of paragraphs to my story: Many people…