A dance critic goes to the theater
June 5, 2023
Tom Stoppard’s Tony-nominated family tale “Leopoldstadt” steps deftly through trauma and time and the toll of the Holocaust.
Tom Stoppard’s Tony-nominated family tale “Leopoldstadt” steps deftly through trauma and time and the toll of the Holocaust.
Yuri Possokhov’s “Firebird” and two other story-dances open the page on Oregon Ballet Theatre’s newest show. Plus: First look at OBT’s 2023-24 season.
After a beautiful last performance in the title role of “La Sylphide,” Xuan Cheng takes her final bow as Oregon Ballet Theatre’s principal ballerina.
The company dives into the lasting challenges of Bournonville’s 1830s Romantic ballet, re-creating a classic for contemporary audiences.
With an emphasis on technique and also inclusion, new director Katarina Svetlova is leading Oregon Ballet Theatre School in a fresh direction.
Oregon Ballet Theatre opens its season with sparkling versions of Christopher Stowell’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux,” and Christopher Bruce’s “Hush.”
Storytelling is at the center of a season opening with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and two more vivid tales.
How Elizabethan: The new and old of Nashville Ballet’s “Black Lucy and the Bard” on PBS’s Great Performances.
Set on a slave ship, the highlight of the company’s performance in White Bird’s We Are One Festival is a ballet by turns gorgeous, gut-wrenching, subtle, sad, dynamic, and celebratory.
Oregon Ballet Theatre’s dancers cut loose spectacularly, and the audience cheers to see live performance once again.
The Seattle ballet star Noelani Pantastico reflects on her long dancing career and her move into teaching the next generation.
Preview: Choreographer Ben Stevenson’s version of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire tale takes to the sky with high romance and lavish design.
On the move: Memoirs by Mark Morris and Carol Rich, Victoria Fortuna’s exploration of dance and violence in Buenos Aires, the legacy of a Russian master.
Generations meet and play when the Keylock company’s young dancers take on the witty choreography of Oregon legend Bielemeier, 71.
Back in the theater for the first time since February 2020, the company shows fine form in a program highlighted by Balanchine’s classic “Four Temperaments.”
The ballet company, disrupted by Covid and an abrupt change in leadership, opens a new season on Friday.
A Portland gathering honors the great writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Here’s what one of her best friends had to say.
On an April evening in 1944, a young dancer from Portland made history in Jerome Robbins’ first ballet.
The great American ballet star, who has died at age 86, was also a great teacher and a great human being.
Dance on screen: It’s not the same as watching a live performance, but when theaters are shut down, it’s a balm.
Dance critic Martha Ullman West looks back on a year of isolation and remembers moments of beauty that broke the spell.
Martha Ullman West remembers Oslund, the Oregon dance legend, who has died at 72.
Oregon Ballet Theatre lights the fireworks with Forsythe, Balanchine, and the dazzling return of “Scheherazade.”
“Dance like you’re real people,” Trey McIntyre told the original cast members of his Robust American Love when he made it on Oregon Ballet Theatre for the 2013-14 season. McIntyre’s take on the real people, particularly the women, who settled the American
Chauncey Parsons, long dark cloak whipped behind him by the speed of his movement, makes an anguished, running entrance onto the Keller Auditorium stage, which is set as a medieval German graveyard, and flings the cloak aside as he kneels before Giselle’s
On Thursday night I made my way down seven flights of cement steps in my building, plus God alone knows how many ditto steps leading from the Park blocks down to the Newmark Theatre, to see Parsons Dance, White Bird’s tenth show
When does the personal become the universal? That is one of several questions raised by Minh Tran’s Anicca (Impermanence), the Vietnamese-born choreographer’s first new piece in eight years, which premiered on Thursday night in Reed College’s Massee Performance Lab. Two years in
Oregon Ballet Theatre has opened its current run of George Balanchine’s ®The Nutcracker at the Keller Auditorium with a meticulously detailed, swiftly paced, high-energy performance of a ballet that can be a chore for people like me to watch. And I say
This is the season of visions and dreams and hope, whether symbolized by Hanukkah candles, Kwanzaa feasts, Christmas trees, fairies in snowy or summery forests, or budding dancers who stand at the barre in their various schools, doing their pliés and tendus
Teresina, the heroine of Napoli, is a woman for our time. Don’t believe me? Go see Oregon Ballet Theatre’s sparkling new production of August Bournonville’s signature ballet, which opens the company’s 29th season at the Keller Auditorium on Saturday night. With a
“Thank you, thank you. Now go home and do your homework,” Arthur Mitchell told 1,500 or so cheering children in the Keller Auditorium, his voice descending from the first balcony, sounding like the voice of God. Dance Theatre of Harlem, the company
A visit to Balanchine’s grave (and my mother’s). The departure of Eric Skinner for a new life in Chicago. A reunion of Pacific Ballet Theatre’s dancers. The death of Paul Taylor. These are the happenings of the past five weeks that have
With its glorious melodies , menacing harmonies, and inclusion of music for dances that actually drive the plot rather than functioning as interludes giving singers a chance to catch their breath, Christoph Willibald Gluck’s 1762 opera Orfeo ed Eurydice has inspired some
NEW YORK – All New York’s a stage, and there is nothing “merely” about its citizens as players. I witnessed the following players make their exits and entrances in a packed visit to my hometown last month, in no particular order: Taxi
I have been reading the many tributes to Ursula K. Le Guin, my friend of 52 years, who died on Monday at age 88, and they are, mostly, wonderful. They make me remember my own reactions to her work, as novelist, poet,
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