Latest news with #choreography
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Smart, sharp and nonstop dance: how Twyla Tharp is bossing the Venice Dance Biennale in her 80s
'Do you know how much I could deadlift in my 50s? Guess!' Twyla Tharp implored Wayne McGregor, in a post-show interview at the Venice Dance Biennale. McGregor, the festival's artistic director, didn't dare venture a figure. 'Two-hundred and twenty-seven pounds!' she told us all, delightedly. Never underestimate Twyla. The slight, white-haired 84-year-old is as sharp as ever, and a force in the dance world. She's been choreographing for 60 years, for ballet companies and Broadway, dance both experimental and accessible, art and pop. And she is honoured this year with the biennale's Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. Tharp is a smart, no-nonsense woman with a dry sense of humour, and her work is much the same. Only two pieces from her vast repertoire are staged in Venice this year, but one especially, Diabelli (from 1998), set to Beethoven's 33 Diabelli Variations, has the same precise, self-certain manner as the woman herself. It takes one idea – the rigorous exploration of music and form – and drills into it determinedly. The dance is non-stop, a showcase for the tremendous dancers of her company, all quite different bodies but brilliant technicians, rooted in classicism with Tharp's easy synthesis of jazz, contemporary and vernacular dance forms. It is absolutely chock-full of steps. That might seem obvious, but a lot of contemporary dance now hinges on vibe, mood and repetitive riffs, whereas Tharp is just step after step, finely and deliberately wrought phrases in constant motion with absolute clarity. With its fairly unwavering tone, from the audience there's perhaps not as much light and shade as Tharp herself sees – but she has no time for dawdling (there's a similarity with McGregor's own work here: the constant fast-paced flying mind, expecting you to keep up). The second piece is the European premiere of Slacktide, set to Philip Glass. It's new, but interestingly, uses material from Tharp's back catalogue, reversioned. Compared with Diabelli, the look is certainly more 'now', diffused light, dancers in black shorts and vests, and rather than the front-facing performance mode of the earlier work, the dancers are on their own trajectories, moving between solos and groups. It has a greater sense of freedom, dynamic and edge, but the same very serious conversation with choreography. The winner of the Silver Lion, for an outstanding upcoming choreographer, was the Brazilian Carolina Bianchi. Bianchi has the same absolute commitment to her art as Tharp, but is a completely different proposition. She's best known for the first part of her Cadela Força trilogy, The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella, in which Bianchi takes a date rape drug live on stage and then attempts to continue the show while the audience watch its effects take over, made in response to her own experience of sexual assault. The second chapter of the trilogy, The Brotherhood, gets its Italian premiere in Venice and it goes deeper (very much deeper, at almost four hours in length) into Bianchi's own attempts to process what happened to her: the injustice, the omnipresent patriarchy, the bewilderment over what gives men seeming licence to abuse women, from the rape of Lucretia to Gisèle Pelicot. She does this through film, performance, a faux interview with a famous theatre director, set-pieces with the male performers from company Cara de Cavalo, and addressing the audience directly. She considers hazing initiations, the myth of the troubled genius in art, the politics of the rehearsal room, the subtle undermining of women in professional life. There's so much here, a bit of editing wouldn't go amiss (although it doesn't feel like 220 minutes) but then this is the ever-circling mind after trauma, always returning to the wound, never finding the answer. Fearless Bianchi is sometimes provocatively shocking, she is also constantly questioning herself, getting in her criticisms before anyone else can. Her subjects are theatre, art, violence and anger. And the real question may be, why aren't we all angrier, all the time, about how commonplace this abuse is? Bianchi introduces herself on stage as predominantly a writer, and this is a text-based show within the realm of performance art, an interesting choice for a dance prize. But the body is absolutely at the centre of her work. Her central question, as she puts it, is what do we do with this body? How to live in a body that survives rape? Elsewhere at the biennale, the opening show comes from Australia's Chunky Move, a company established in 1995, now led by Antony Hamilton, who has choreographed U>N>I>T>E>D. The stage is dominated by a large mechanical contraption, a piece of rigging that holds what looks like a giant insect with flashing and glowing lights. The dancers have mechanical limbs too, multijointed insect-y legs attached to them, turning them into human-machine hybrid hexapods. It immediately brought to mind a piece McGregor made for his company in 2002, Nemesis, where the dancers wore mechanical limbs extending their arms. In fact the whole look is very millennium-bug-throwback, like a guerrilla army of hackers who've jumped the fence at Glastonbury, in baggy parachute pants with all sorts of straps and layers and clashing patterns and camo and reflective neon. It's a crusty-cyberpunk look – if you ever went near Brighton in the 1990s, you'd recognise it. Except that in the 90s we barely had mobile phones or email addresses and this kind of tech felt like pure sci-fi, whereas now, the idea of humans getting tech implants or machines becoming sentient is basically the world we live in. So that's unnerving. But what does Hamilton have to say about it? Not so much. The thing about all the cumbersome props is that they extend the body's possibilities, but also reduce their ability to move. There's a vague sense of struggle between embracing or fighting the machines but, just like in the real world, having the technology is one thing, deciding what to use it for, or what you want to say with it, is entirely another. It's neither stirringly hopeful nor apocalyptic enough to be terrifying. Twyla would have those mechanical critters for breakfast. The Venice Dance Biennale continues until 2 August
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Smart, sharp and nonstop dance: how Twyla Tharp is bossing the Venice Dance Biennale in her 80s
'Do you know how much I could deadlift in my 50s? Guess!' Twyla Tharp implored Wayne McGregor, in a post-show interview at the Venice Dance Biennale. McGregor, the festival's artistic director, didn't dare venture a figure. 'Two-hundred and twenty-seven pounds!' she told us all, delightedly. Never underestimate Twyla. The slight, white-haired 84-year-old is as sharp as ever, and a force in the dance world. She's been choreographing for 60 years, for ballet companies and Broadway, dance both experimental and accessible, art and pop. And she is honoured this year with the biennale's Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. Tharp is a smart, no-nonsense woman with a dry sense of humour, and her work is much the same. Only two pieces from her vast repertoire are staged in Venice this year, but one especially, Diabelli (from 1998), set to Beethoven's 33 Diabelli Variations, has the same precise, self-certain manner as the woman herself. It takes one idea – the rigorous exploration of music and form – and drills into it determinedly. The dance is non-stop, a showcase for the tremendous dancers of her company, all quite different bodies but brilliant technicians, rooted in classicism with Tharp's easy synthesis of jazz, contemporary and vernacular dance forms. It is absolutely chock-full of steps. That might seem obvious, but a lot of contemporary dance now hinges on vibe, mood and repetitive riffs, whereas Tharp is just step after step, finely and deliberately wrought phrases in constant motion with absolute clarity. With its fairly unwavering tone, from the audience there's perhaps not as much light and shade as Tharp herself sees – but she has no time for dawdling (there's a similarity with McGregor's own work here: the constant fast-paced flying mind, expecting you to keep up). The second piece is the European premiere of Slacktide, set to Philip Glass. It's new, but interestingly, uses material from Tharp's back catalogue, reversioned. Compared with Diabelli, the look is certainly more 'now', diffused light, dancers in black shorts and vests, and rather than the front-facing performance mode of the earlier work, the dancers are on their own trajectories, moving between solos and groups. It has a greater sense of freedom, dynamic and edge, but the same very serious conversation with choreography. The winner of the Silver Lion, for an outstanding upcoming choreographer, was the Brazilian Carolina Bianchi. Bianchi has the same absolute commitment to her art as Tharp, but is a completely different proposition. She's best known for the first part of her Cadela Força trilogy, The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella, in which Bianchi takes a date rape drug live on stage and then attempts to continue the show while the audience watch its effects take over, made in response to her own experience of sexual assault. The second chapter of the trilogy, The Brotherhood, gets its Italian premiere in Venice and it goes deeper (very much deeper, at almost four hours in length) into Bianchi's own attempts to process what happened to her: the injustice, the omnipresent patriarchy, the bewilderment over what gives men seeming licence to abuse women, from the rape of Lucretia to Gisèle Pelicot. She does this through film, performance, a faux interview with a famous theatre director, set-pieces with the male performers from company Cara de Cavalo, and addressing the audience directly. She considers hazing initiations, the myth of the troubled genius in art, the politics of the rehearsal room, the subtle undermining of women in professional life. There's so much here, a bit of editing wouldn't go amiss (although it doesn't feel like 220 minutes) but then this is the ever-circling mind after trauma, always returning to the wound, never finding the answer. Fearless Bianchi is sometimes provocatively shocking, she is also constantly questioning herself, getting in her criticisms before anyone else can. Her subjects are theatre, art, violence and anger. And the real question may be, why aren't we all angrier, all the time, about how commonplace this abuse is? Bianchi introduces herself on stage as predominantly a writer, and this is a text-based show within the realm of performance art, an interesting choice for a dance prize. But the body is absolutely at the centre of her work. Her central question, as she puts it, is what do we do with this body? How to live in a body that survives rape? Elsewhere at the biennale, the opening show comes from Australia's Chunky Move, a company established in 1995, now led by Antony Hamilton, who has choreographed U>N>I>T>E>D. The stage is dominated by a large mechanical contraption, a piece of rigging that holds what looks like a giant insect with flashing and glowing lights. The dancers have mechanical limbs too, multijointed insect-y legs attached to them, turning them into human-machine hybrid hexapods. It immediately brought to mind a piece McGregor made for his company in 2002, Nemesis, where the dancers wore mechanical limbs extending their arms. In fact the whole look is very millennium-bug-throwback, like a guerrilla army of hackers who've jumped the fence at Glastonbury, in baggy parachute pants with all sorts of straps and layers and clashing patterns and camo and reflective neon. It's a crusty-cyberpunk look – if you ever went near Brighton in the 1990s, you'd recognise it. Except that in the 90s we barely had mobile phones or email addresses and this kind of tech felt like pure sci-fi, whereas now, the idea of humans getting tech implants or machines becoming sentient is basically the world we live in. So that's unnerving. But what does Hamilton have to say about it? Not so much. The thing about all the cumbersome props is that they extend the body's possibilities, but also reduce their ability to move. There's a vague sense of struggle between embracing or fighting the machines but, just like in the real world, having the technology is one thing, deciding what to use it for, or what you want to say with it, is entirely another. It's neither stirringly hopeful nor apocalyptic enough to be terrifying. Twyla would have those mechanical critters for breakfast. The Venice Dance Biennale continues until 2 August
New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Moves That Made ‘Chicago' and ‘A Chorus Line' Singular Sensations
Fifty years ago, when director-choreographer giants still walked the earth, two of the biggest — Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett — created highly influential shows that have attained legendary status and lasted: 'Chicago' and 'A Chorus Line.' These were musicals with dancing at the center. The showbiz-cynical attitude of 'Chicago,' a tale of 1920s murderers who go into vaudeville, was inseparable from its choreographic style. 'A Chorus Line' was about Broadway dancers, built from their real-life stories and framed as an audition. To celebrate the golden anniversaries of these shows, The New York Times invited Robyn Hurder, who has performed in productions of both over the past two decades (and recently received a Tony nomination for her performance in 'Smash'), to demonstrate and discuss what makes the choreography so special. To coach her, direct-lineage experts were on hand. transcript [MUSIC] For 'A Chorus Line,' Hurder could turn to Baayork Lee, an original cast member who has been staging and directing the show ever since. (She's directing an anniversary benefit performance on July 27.) For 'Chicago,' Verdon Fosse Legacy — an organization dedicated to preserving and reconstructing the choreography of Fosse and his chief collaborator, Gwen Verdon — sent Dana Moore, who worked with Fosse in his 1978 'Dancin'' and his 1986 revival of 'Sweet Charity.' She also danced in the 1996 'Chicago' revival and in revivals of 'A Chorus Line,' too. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ashton's ‘Sylvia' Is a Test of a Ballerina's Versatility
The names of several classic ballets tell you that the heroine is the most important character, but 'Sylvia' is particularly imbalanced. In the version that Frederick Ashton created in 1952, once Sylvia arrives, she barely seems to leave the stage. The role, made for Margot Fonteyn, is a test of stamina and technique but maybe even more so of range. Each part of the story calls for a different attitude, differently expressed. One ballerina must be many. At the Metropolitan Opera House last week, as American Ballet Theater performed Ashton's ballet for the first time since 2016, four ballerinas took up the challenge, making their debuts as Sylvia. There's more to the production than the lead role: Léo Delibes' 1876 score, one of best from the 19th century; the many felicities of Ashton's choreography, sweet, silly and intricate at every scale. But the performance of Sylvia is the focus. 'Sylvia' has one of those flimsy conventional story-ballet plots that's mostly just a scaffolding for dance. A chaste nymph devoted to Diana, goddess of the hunt, Sylvia doesn't just spurn the affection of the shepherd Aminta; she kills him with an arrow. Then Eros, the god of love, strikes her with his arrow, making her moon over Aminta, whom the god revives. But Sylvia is captured by a dumb villain and must escape his Orientalist cave by distracting him with a hoochie-coochie dance and getting him drunk. Rescued deus-ex-machina style by Eros in a boat, she is reunited with Aminta in a big classical celebration. Intentionally old-fashioned in 1952, it's less a love story than a story about Love. The brutish approach of the hunter fails; the delicacy of a pas de deux wins. It's a nice change that the heroine doesn't wait around for her beau or get betrayed by him — in a reversal of 'Sleeping Beauty,' the woman has a vision of the man she must find. But an upshot is that the hero is ineffectual, close to a place holder. Dramatically, Sylvia carries the show. On a technical level, there wasn't a lot to distinguish the four debuting Sylvias. They all got through it admirably. The differences were subtle, and the similarities were related to a general shortcoming: Demonstrations of range were on the narrow side. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Times
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Dancing king? That's him (not me)
It's a warm Wednesday evening and I'm in a dance studio in central London, focused entirely on moving my body to the opening bars of Wannabe by the Spice Girls. I strut forward. I freeze. I jiggle my hips. I freeze again. I shimmy to the right, move my hands coyly yet alluringly over my face and torso, then shimmy to the left, do a spin before — and this is the bit I've been really struggling with — going on to my tiptoes, moving my knees together and thrusting my groin in time to the 'zig-a-zig-ahhhh'. I can no longer remember how many times I've been through this short routine. Ten? Twelve? A million? I'm very tired. My left calf is shaking and twitching like a nervous pet and I'm sweating so much that, glancing at myself in the studio's mirrored wall, I look like a jogger who has fallen into a canal. Fortunately, none of the 40 or so middle-aged women around me seem to notice or care. There is only one man commanding their attention, and it is the diminutive Brazilian in a Spice Girls T-shirt, baseball cap and very short shorts who is leading the class. He moves before us with the kind of snappy, sassy physicality I now yearn to possess, and we attempt to mirror his every step and sashay. He sings along to the lyrics with a faint lisp. He goes on his tiptoes, moves his knees together and rapidly thrusts his groin. 'Thig-a-thig-ahhhh,' he cries, his face ecstatic. The music stops. The room goes wild. His name is Justin Neto. He is a celebrity choreographer with more than six million followers across social media, but more than that, he is a sort of sociological phenomenon. Women — and I cannot stress this enough — absolutely love him, but particularly women in their mid-forties and beyond, who flock to the classes he runs in Rio and New York City. That he is, for the very first time, in London to offer a week of classes at $60 (£44) a ticket is incredibly exciting. One woman, Emma, has come all the way from Blackpool to be here tonight. 'I'd follow him on tour around the world if I could,' she says, breathless and endorphin-sozzled. She had seen clips of him teaching classes on her teenage daughter's Instagram and was immediately drawn to him. 'He's fun. He's energetic.' Alexia is a 55-year-old who lives in New York and attends his classes there, but is visiting London so thought she'd do a class here too. 'He's like an injection of joy!' she says. 'It's escapism. And for a menopausal woman, having to learn all the moves has been a huge help for my brain.' Two sisters, Anna and Pippa, love that Neto plays 'our music, Eighties music'. Back on the dancefloor, a woman in a vest that reads 'No pain, no champagne' absolutely throws herself into the Footloose routine. Having spent much of my twenties as the only person on the dancefloor not on MDMA, tonight, in my forties, I am one of the few people not on HRT. There is only one other man present. What you doing here, I ask? 'Date night,' he says, nodding towards his wife. 'Her choice.' She smiles and thumps him affectionately. • Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing Neto admits that he is still coming to terms with his rise to stardom. For all his exuberance as a teacher he is, in person, thoughtful and reflective. Growing up in the Brazilian city of Joao Pessoa, he had been a 'shy, insecure' choirboy. But the first time he saw the video to Britney Spears' …Baby One More Time his entire world changed. He pestered his mother to buy him her CD, attempting to convince her that Spears was a godly, gospel singer, and does a very good impression of his mother looking at him sideways with suspicion. But the main thing is he wangled the CD. 'Britney Spears was my No 1 diva, my first dance teacher ever,' he says, describing how, when he had the family apartment to himself, he would practise Britney's moves in the living room for hours and hours. His shyness and insecurity gradually left him. One day his father came home early and caught him. He shouted at his son, telling him that what he was doing was wrong. ''No!' I told him,' Neto says, chin thrust upwards. ''It is not wrong!'' And that was that. He became a choreographer and, after a brief false start hosting a show on Brazilian cable TV, found himself in New York teaching dance classes, but not attracting as many students as he would have liked. For his final class of 2020, he encouraged everyone to come and, rather than doing a strict, technique-heavy choreography session, they would dress up in festive clothes and have a laugh dancing to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You. He posted the video online with no expectations. 'And it went viral!' he says, eyes wide. Similar videos followed, and did even bigger numbers. 'I had comments in Japanese. I never got comments in Japanese before.' • Dance for 20 minutes a day 'to hit weekly exercise target' Looking back, the appeal was not hard to understand. In a world emerging from a pandemic slump, there was something potent and magnetic about the carefree communality of it all, groups of people being joyous and active and in close proximity. Over the past decade social media has changed the nature of choreography, with online tutorials allowing people to practise and repeat the moves they see, but also by placing a greater premium on the projection of personality rather than perfect technique. This all worked to Neto's advantage. His classes swelled, particularly with women who might previously have felt intimidated. And when these women began appearing in his clips, they only helped to attract more fans. 'Because in the videos it was mostly middle-aged women and women who look like me,' a woman in bright trainers called Claire tells me. 'It's like a huge group-hug experience that only women really get. Men in middle age need to conquer a 'personal best' challenge, like a triathlon or marathon. Women need to get together in groups to laugh and hold each other up. And that's just what Justin's classes do.' • I learnt to twerk like Meghan Markle Neto, for his part, is alive to this fact. He is protective of the women who come to his classes, and while he stresses that he is not a therapist — 'If you need therapy, get therapy!' — he is touchingly in-tune with his clientele. 'When you're crossing your forties and moving into your fifties, your mind has a lot of things to manage, and there can be lots of changes coming and lots of everyday stress,' he says. Some women place a huge amount of pressure on themselves at this stage of life. 'So the music, the sound, the vibration is a good way to heal some of those expectations. It's an environment with no judgment.' The class finishes with a huge blow-out to It's Raining Men. There are hugs and high-fives, and people queue for selfies with Neto. He teaches more than a dozen classes a week and though he says he needs to slow down to save his knees and back, I'm not sure his fans will let him. There are just too many happy, red-faced women floating into the night. 'I think,' he says quietly, after they have gone, 'that I have found my mission.'
