Tag: Joyce Theater

… or even badder? …

Rock the Ballet brings together rock music and ballet in a completely natural and satisfying combination — as in, “so glad you did this!” The ballet technique is superb, and incorporates movements from hip hop and other contemporary dance, and the music is the best of rock.

Interpreting both, and holding it all together are the outstanding lit backdrops by William Cusick, amalgams of computer design, video and photography that are stunningly beautiful works of art in themselves. Since these evolve continuously, it’s hard to pin them down in memory but the episode with large patches of oranges and yellow with thinning edges, like frayed linen — sort of Mark Rothko sideways — lingers.

Rasta Thomas is a masterful ballet dancer and the most charismatic performer but all the dancers have wonderful — even irresistible — moments. This is a great event to take young people to since the youngest in the audience know the music and love the athleticism of the dance — along with the older ones!

In Act I: Beautiful Day, the accent is on joy. It features dances composed to the music of the Black Eyed Peas, U2, Lenny Kravitz, Dave Mathews Band, Coldplay, Journey, as well as Bizet’s Carmen sung by Maria Callas and Ne Me Quitte Pas by Jacques Brel. The partnering of Rasta Thomas and Adrienne Canterna-Thomas was particularly effective in Ne Me Quitte Pas — the only music of the entire program the young people in my neighborhood didn’t know but that didn’t spoil their enjoyment of the dance.

Act II: Rock You, lets out the stops on vibrant rhythms and big exciting noise — with big exciting dance — and the music of Clint Mansell, Queen, Prince, and Michael Jackson.

Two small thoughts: the choreography by Adrienne Canterna-Thomas is able but she could loosen up on her imagination. More surprising, for a group that calls themselves The Bad Boys of Dance, they are on the well-behaved side. Personally, I’d like to seem them even badder. The fact is, though, Rock The Ballet left everyone with huge smiles, warm faces and heartbeats raised a pleasant notch.

Rock the Ballet plays at the Joyce Theater in NYC’s Chelsea through Jan 3.

For their opening night at the Joyce Theater, Keigwin + Company presented four dances. Natural Selection was the ins and outs of three pairs of dancers in muted colors suggestive of simplicity and nature that didn’t add anything to similar modern pas de deux variations, and the dancers sometimes searched for their footing when set down from a lift. One learned fast to keep ones eyes on Liz Riga, a tall, long legged, extremely flexible and vibrant dancer.

Love Songs, to music by Roy Orbison, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone, was more varied in terms of partnering and with more traces of street dancing, but tended to repeat its good “bits.” The program notes that Liz Riga “was named one of the top 20 dancers of 2008 by Dance Magazine for her ‘over the top raunchy/funny femme fatal’ performance of Larry Keigwin’s Love Songs.” She’s great, but that’s an overstatement of the role.

Triptych was a world premier but brought nothing new. The last, Bolero NYC, had an interesting possibility: large numbers of people of all sizes, shapes and ages promenading dance-like in an open urban area — like Washington Square Park, many of the dancers come from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts near there. Once dancer — yes, Liz Riga — leads a dog. There’s a steady-ahead bicyclist. Everybody wears black and red miscellaneous costumes from “Our Closets.” There are crowd pleasers: an extremely tall ectomorphic male parading slowly in a tiny red bikini; an overweight woman in a bright red satin dress wiggling to “Bolero,” and in fact, the ballet panders to laughs and sentimentality. A tiny tot of a girl is left too long alone on the stage with an inflated balloon; and, as if Ravel’s “Bolero” wasn’t enough, at the end there’s a segue to “Celebration.”

The dancing ranged from competent to, in one case, tops — the women were generally finer dancers than the men — but all in all the choreography lacked imaginative vigor.

Keigwin + Company dances at the Joyce Theater — usually a GREAT venue for dance — in NYC’s Chelsea district June 23-27.

Yvonne Korshak reviews Off-Broadway, Broadway, Film and Art

Tag: Joyce Theater

Ballet Review | Rasta Thomas’ Rock the Ballet | Starring The Bad Boys of Dance | Joyce Theater

Dance Review | Keigwin + Company | Joyce Theater