Life as a Modern Dancer

Category: Review/Response

  • Creating a New Model and Landscape for Dance Criticism and Dance Reflection: Honoring Artists’ Voices and Offering Multiple Viewpoints

    From Blog Director Jill Randall: Right now I am knee deep into this topic. A few years back, due to a twindling dance writing community in the San Francisco Bay Area, I started getting into dance previews, reviews, and audience feedback platforms on this site. Today, I want to propose my latest vision for the…

  • A Home for Improvisation at “Never Before Never Again”

    The Leftovers. Pictured: Hannah Wendel, Mei Yamanaka, Sarah Chien, and Donnell Oakley. Photo credit: Yechiel Husarsky.   A Home for Improvisation at "Never Before Never Again" By Sarah Chien "Never Before Never Again," or “NBNA,” is an annual 3-week festival in January at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood. This year was guest curated by…

  • Breaking Down with KWENTO

    Catherine Liu. Photo by Andy Strong. Breaking Down with KWENTO By Garth Grimball KWENTO’s Break, a premiere directed and danced by Catherine Liu, artistic director, with an ensemble cast, opened at PianoFight on Jan 31. Break is dance theater. A medium of synthesis that few can get to show and not tell, rather than show…

  • Still Lingering: Reflections on “Action Potential,” Six Months Later

    Shira Yaziv and Megan Lowe. Photo by Sebastian Arrua. Still Lingering: Reflections on “Action Potential,” Six Months Later By Molly Rose-Williams On August 27, 2019, I saw Megan Lowe Dances’ production of “Action Potential” at the Athletic Playground in Emeryville, CA. The site-specific work was directed by Megan Lowe, and created and performed in collaboration…

  • Modern Dance in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2019, as Captured Through 21 Dance Performance Reviews

    From Blog Director Jill Randall: Back in 2012 when I began Life as a Modern Dancer, I did not initially envision it being a site for dance reviews and dance criticism. But as the site grew and changed each year, the need arose for a new platform for dance criticism in the Bay Area. I…

  • What’s To Come: An Evening Spent at Juilliard’s New Dances

    This Great Wilderness by Jamar Roberts. © Todd Rosenberg Photography What’s To Come: An Evening Spent at Juilliard’s New Dances By Phoebe Ballard   Part 1: The Show This is my favorite environment. The lobby is abuzz with excitement: parents visiting from out of town, friends from neighboring departments, members of the dance community affiliated…

  • Reflections on “divisions the empire has sown” (pateldanceworks)

      Reflections on "divisions the empire has sown" By Molly Rose-Williams   Part I: One Reflection on “divisions the empire has sown” I get to the show early. Or at least I think I have. When I walk into the Finnish Hall basement I’m met with an aromatic wash of freshly-brewed chai tea and fried…

  • Reflection+Response: Sensing Habitat in Precarious Pod

    Photo: Yvonne M. Portra Sensing Habitat in Precarious Pod By Garth Grimball Imagine wilderness. Is it near or far? How do you access the wild? For some “wilderness” is a curse word. It implies that the natural world is wild and separate from nature we interact with daily. It allows a magical thinking of boundaries…

  • A Bridge to Cunningham in Six Quotations

    Left to right: Hope Mohr, Nicole Peisl, and Rashaun Mitchell. Photo by Hillary Goidell. A Bridge to Cunningham in Six Quotations By Garth Grimball   I like poems to be poetic and prose to be prosaic, religion to be prophetic and philosophy to be crystal clear. Edmund White This year marks the centennial of Merce…

  • In Review: Borders, Spaces and Brown Eyes with the Davalos Dance Company

    Borders, Spaces and Brown Eyes Davalos Dance Company October 5, 2019 Shawl-Anderson Dance Center By Bhumi B. Patel I have brown eyes and am taller than the average Gujurati woman. My relationship to brown is knowing it to be the way I was born, like my mother, and her mother. And that feels acutely relevant…