Tag: dance

Food, Song, and Chess…

Some fun, creative analogies and descriptions of dance and dance works I’ve come across in reviews recently…

Food:

“If Ratmansky’s first Cinderella was a tongue-scorching Wasabi pea, this one is a smooth, sophisticated sugared almond.”

– Hanna Weibye, “Cinderella, Ratmansky/Australian Ballet, London Coliseum“

Mouthwatering_(18871167589)
“Mouthwatering” Sugared Almonds and other sweet stuff… by Theo K. Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

Song:

“Dancing as Matthew, Christian Clark takes bounding leaps and head-spinning pirouettes that sing with emotion.”

– Cynthia Bond Perry, “Review:‘Moulin Rouge’“

Handel Aria Detail 1
Detail from “Handel, Rinaldo Aria, 1876”. Wikimedia Commons Public Domain Image.

Chess:

“[..] its kaleidoscopically lit, ever-shifting rows and columns are composed as intricately as a Kasparov opening gambit.”

–Mark Monahan, “Macbeth outgunned by a massive party – review“

Opening_chess_position_from_black_side
“Opening chess position from black side” by MichaelMaggs. Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Summer (Ballet) Love

Midsummer Night's Dream Clara's Coffee Break
Image by Rachel Hellwig.

Great commentary on the wedding divertissement pas de deux from Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream…

“In this midst of all this prettiness lies a pas de deux of startling transparency. A man and a woman travel across the stage with excruciating slowness, executing the choreographic equivalent of a melody sustained on a single breath. He partners her with the lightest of touches as she turns slowly, lowering and raising one leg; or he lifts her so that she travels – or rather floats – backward through space. At one point, they glide in a diagonal, their arms gently pushing one against the other as if to propel each other forward. Every image adds up to the same idea: eternity, balance, trust.”

– Marina Harss, May 29, 2016, “New York City Ballet – Midsummer Night’s Dream”

“Balanchine demonstrates the ideal of Romantic love: two anonymous dancers at the wedding divertissement dance to Mendelssohn’s string symphony No. 9. The music is high, sweet and tender; the dance seems timeless, and suspended. The opposite of the “Pyramus and Thisbe” amateur-dramatic show that Shakespeare provides at this stage in the drama, it floats above the ballet’s plot like the moon”

– Alastair Macaulay, May 23, 2016, “Love Two Ways: Ashton and Balanchine on Romance“