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MARCIA B. SIEGEL

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Jonah Bokaer takes chances

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.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | August 09, 2011

Developing dances at the ICA

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.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | August 02, 2011

Kidd Pivot's Dark Matters at Jacob's Pillow

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.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | July 12, 2011

West Side Story does it all

A classic refinished
The touring production now at the Colonial Theater (through July 9) suits a modern audience without extinguishing the show's greatest assets.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | June 24, 2011

Dawn Kramer's 'Body of Water'

Haiku in motion
Dawn Kramer's dance-and-video concert, "Body of Water," last weekend at Mass College of Art, ended with haiku projected on the walls of the performance space. It was almost too much.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | June 09, 2011

Tudor, Millepied, Ratmansky, and Wheeldon at ABT

Expanding the envelope
NEW YORK — American Ballet Theatre devoted only four performances of its two-month spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House to a mixed bill of short ballets.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | June 06, 2011

Brian Crabtree's unified fragments

Stanzas
The 10 dance fragments looked like a close-knit family with a couple of fractious siblings.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 25, 2011

Boston Ballet's 'Balanchine/Robbins,' plus a soupçon of tap

The pleasures of craft
Boston Ballet is ending the season with four prime examples of ballet choreography, displaying not only the rigors of classical technique but the different kinds of images technique can be crafted to evoke.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 19, 2011

Nell Breyer and Lostwax dance the unconscious

Dream games
Two offerings by Boston Cyberarts over the weekend opted for divergent ways of gaining enlightenment.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 12, 2011

The meaning of 'THE'

Boston Ballet's 'Bella Figura'
William Forsythe's 1991 ballet The Second Detail begins with 13 dancers in ice-blue leotards and tights, facing away from the audience.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 09, 2011

Beijing Dance/LDTX fight the good fight

Struggle and solidarity
Life is a struggle, according to the four works on Friday's program by Beijing Dance/LDTX (presented by the Celebrity Series at the Tsai Performance Center).

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | April 06, 2011

Jorma Elo and Anna Sokolow

What's in that box?
In silence a man slowly pushes a large, light-filled box across a dark stage. The box is bigger than an outhouse and smaller than a garage, and the light shows through only one side.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | March 30, 2011

Boston Conservatory does Graham and Limón; Doug Varone gets literary at the ICA

Heroes and civilians
One thing that distinguishes the early modern dancers from their contemporary descendants is idealism, or the lack of it.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | March 25, 2011

Psy at the Majestic, Savion Glover at the Opera House

Getting off the ground and into it
Montreal breeds a seemingly infinite number of new-circus companies.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | February 02, 2011

Review: Nicholas Leichter at the ICA

Funkin' around
Except for an impressive list of sponsors and presenters, Nicholas Leichter doesn't tell us much about The Whiz , his gloss on Sidney Lumet's 1978 movie The Wiz , a gloss on the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz , which could be the most beloved and riffed-upon artifact of American culture.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | February 01, 2011

Live! — sort of

Fela! on screen
The success of the Metropolitan Opera's "Live in HD" experiment augurs well for dance on the big screen. Simulcast at select theaters, with tickets priced higher than for a movie but much cheaper than for a live opera, these events generate a sense of anticipation.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | January 14, 2011

Review: Alexei Ratmansky's startling new Nutcracker

Love and snow
The greatness of Alexei Ratmansky's new Nutcracker , which American Ballet Theatre premiered on December 23 at Brooklyn Academy's Opera House, lies in two famous scenes, both recognizable yet reconceived and reanimated by the choreographer. The snow scene and the grand pas de deux are usually staged as climactic showpieces for acts one and two, in this most familiar of the old Russian ballets. With characteristic humanism, Ratmansky makes them something more.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | January 07, 2011

The Best Boston Dance Stories of 2010

Tradition, innovation, and (loving) parody animated the year's dance
Some of the past year's most interesting dance events recaptured iconic moments in our history, either as usable texts for today's dancers or as a springboard into reinterpretation, parody, and nostalgia.

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 22, 2010

A dance critic's take on Black Swan

Bad-girl chat
WARNING: This article contains spoilers regarding the ending of Black Swan .

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 14, 2010

Review: BalletRox's Urban Nutcracker

Plus a visit from Beth Soll
BalletRox's Urban Nutcracker, plus a visit from Beth Soll

By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 14, 2010

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