The three women began it in a dim light, on the floor, stretching and rolling, rising into twisty shoulder stands, to music from the beginning of Stravinsky’s score. The men appeared and there were small groups and duets while we heard provocative voices and music (arranged by Mitchell Lager): jungle drums and heavy breathing underlaid with strands of Stravinsky, a professorial male voice talking smugly about putting the anxiety of a “ravished” woman on display.
Back in the ballet’s climactic moments, the dancers galloped in circles with their hands locked behind their backs, then enacted a series of short, strange ritual patterns. Finally, to the relentless “Danse sacrale,” where the Chosen Woman dances herself to death, Shila Tirabassi, in a flesh-colored unitard, leaped and quivered, wrenched her body open and squeezed it tight. When the music ended and the lights went out, she was still standing but barely hanging on. The audience was barely breathing.
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Dancing across the city, Scenes from the city, A little history, More 
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The ICA’s Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, with its sprung wood dance floor and wrap-around windows framing the harbor, is positioned to become Boston dance’s most significant venue.
- Scenes from the city
I missed more things in two and a half days last week than I managed to take in, so whatever I might infer about dance in the New York vortex could have come out a different way if I’d reversed my priorities.
- A little history
Two of Boston's most admired and honored composers (both Pulitzer winners) have just celebrated landmark birthdays: Yehudi Wyner his 80th and John Harbison his 70th.
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Despite Rufus Wainwright’s intentions, Release the Stars could be his most lavishly appointed disc yet.
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Are Jay-Z’s synapses wired to express supreme confidence?
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If Igor Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps paved the way for modern rock, then George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique made possible every genre of contemporary music with “noise” or “metal” in its name.
- Rock and roles
A good number of the jokes in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story are available for your amusement right now, well ahead of the film’s December 21 theatrical-release date.
- Country for old men
A youthful 80-year-old Sir Colin Davis was back in front of the Boston Symphony Orchestra last weekend with one of the pieces he loves most.
- Winter harvest
"I don’t want to be here,” soprano Susan Larson lamented in her moving eulogy to her old friend and colleague Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
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When you hear of a new ballet titled Russian Seasons, you visualize khovorods and trepaks danced in a simulated birch grove by peasants in earth-toned costumes.
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The Bad Plus plus a singer
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Dance
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, Entertainment, Science and Technology, Media, Poetry, Biology, Life Sciences, Sciences, Dance, Performing Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, Less
