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MARCIA B. SIEGEL
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Mellow musings
Erik Satie called his vocal work Socrate a "symphonic drama," though it's anything but dramatic in a theatrical sense — or symphonic, either.
Number three
New York has two great ballet companies, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Any other ballet troupe that wants to put down roots there has to develop a personality that's distinct from those two.
Old Don, old tricks
In the long string of ballet productions extracted from Miguel de Cervantes's novel Don Quixote, the delusional Don has become a minor character, charging into situations where he shouldn't go and causing trouble instead of good works.
Polished hi-jinks
When Trey McIntyre found a base for his infant company in Boise, Idaho, four years ago, eyebrows lifted in the dance world.
Dress-up
All three dances presented by Ballet Hispanico at the Cutler Majestic last weekend depended heavily on costume effects to convey their messages.
Light spells
At the beginning of Vamos al tiroteo, the new flamenco show by Rafaela Carrasco, the darkened, silent theater is pierced by a strobe light, clacking castanets, and the scratchings of an old phonograph record.
New spirits
Doug Varone's 2006 The Constant Shift of Pulse is a modern dance classic of recent vintage: fast, death-defying, and passionate about nothing but the movement.
Carnival of Waifs
All the characters in Oyster, the Israeli show presented by Celebrity Series last weekend at the Paramount, are physically challenged in some way.
Somewhere over the top
When the audience entered the theater at the ICA on Friday night, we saw a wooden table and chairs, set up for a simple meal — possibly breakfast.
Their saintly boss
Wim Wenders's Pina memorializes the late choreographer Pina Bausch with reverential tributes from her past and present dancers and excerpts from four of her works.
From Fela! to Merce
Here's a look at highlights from my year of dance viewing.
Last looks
Expiring dance companies either implode from suppressed internal troubles, or they just peter out quietly.
Cool moves
November brought a dense cluster of dance events to galvanize our thinking about how dancers have re-imagined their craft and challenged their audiences over the past few decades.
Return of the star-cross'd
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has probably inspired as many ballet translations as The Rite of Spring .
Sex wars
You don't want to take the title of Gallim Dance's Blush too seriously — at least not if you're expecting embarrassment, shame, modesty, confusion, those textbook signifiers of someone who'd like to creep away and hide.
Oceanic love
The synopsis for the new Peter Martins/Paul McCartney ballet Ocean's Kingdom reads like a pastiche of 19th and early-20th-century plots.
Forest forays
Brown's newest work, Les Yeux et l'âme , is a suite of dances from Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera Pygmalion , which Brown directed in Europe last year.
Charting chaos
Bokaer didn't provide any grandiose program notes or play up the profound implications in his dances, but by the end of the performance we'd seen small transformations and beautiful visions, and even confronted big questions about control and randomness, civilization and nature.
Summer summary
Summer Stages Dance wrapped its 14th season Saturday afternoon at the Institute of Contemporary Art with a presentation by four choreographers who've been working with the students at Concord Academy through July.
Puppets and masters
The two-act drama, performed last week at Jacob's Pillow, blends the conventions of Japanese puppetry and Kabuki, movie animation, shadowplay, and contemporary dance into a spectacle of porous identities.
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