Category: Review/Response

From Blog Director Jill Randall: It has been a wonderful experiment throughout the past year, diving into dance criticism and reflection on this blog platform. What are the various new angles and approaches to writing about performances – before, during, and after? We are exploring this with artists, audience members, and writers alike. This week…

From Blog Director Jill Randall: It has been a wonderful experiment throughout the past year, diving into dance criticism and reflection on this blog platform. What are the various new angles and approaches to writing about performances – before, during, and after? We are exploring this with artists, audience members, and writers alike. This week…

Molly Heller; photo by Marissa Mooney Woodland Creatures, Summer Dance By Garth Grimball Remember when the “Song of Summer” wasn’t something to be predicted? The title wasn’t competed for, amalgamated from streaming metrics, to create a four-quadrant hit that could sustain the rapid-release-music-output era we now live in. Rather, as Summer faded into Fall, we…

Emily Hansel, Mallory Markham, Katie Meyers, and Jessie Egbert. Photo by Summer Wilson. Decisions, Decisions in BIG SALT By Garth Grimball “The doing is what seems hard. The having seems marvelous. But one doesn’t have a child, one does it.” So writes Sheila Heti in her autofiction novel Motherhood, dissecting the ambivalence and paralysis of choosing…

Photo: Cheshire Isaacs Lili Weckler | Unhinge rocks the Earth with mixed results By Garth Grimball Minimalism is a privilege. This is the creed of maximalist artist and Macarthur “genius” Taylor Mac, whose genre-blurring, activism-cum-cabaret acts use spectacle as a means to communicate urgency. Minimalism allows time to process and reflect. Maximalism demands action. SiStars…

“Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers and Leapfrogs” offers a tantalizing foray into a queer imagination By Molly Rose-Williams It is rare for me that going to a show feels like going to a party. Shaunna Vella and Andrew Merrell’s newest work, “Lipstick Lumberjacks, Losers, and Leapfrogs,” was one of those shows. Their brand of party wasn’t like…

Photo: Stephen Texeira Amy Foley’s Let Slip the Witches is Flat-out Transcendent By Sarah JG Chenoweth The irresistibility of witches is markedly familiar, even if you don’t share the compulsion. From fable to brutal history to contemporary practice, their stories are streaked with a power and mystery that we cannot ignore. It seems that to be witchy…

Photo: Ryan Kwok Still Resonating: Dicotomía del Silencio by Rogelio Lopez & Dancers By Molly Rose-Williams If reckoning is a sensational act – a surrender to past, present, and future converging in a single, visceral moment – then Dicotomía del Silencio gives form to that sensation. The newest work from Rogelio Lopez & Dancers is…

Tension Remains after Nevertheless By Sarah JG Chenoweth ka-nei-see | collective and Cat Call Choir produced an adaptation of their 2018 success, Nevertheless, at Z Space last weekend. The show—expanded from its premiere to include new sections, additional performers, and a visual art exhibition in the lobby—was condemning but not cathartic. Certainly the aftermath of sexual…