Rachel Straus - Dance Writer

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Juilliard Dance

 
Published: April 5, 2016
Category: review

Paul Taylor Dancers Successfully Complete Extended Marathon

By Rachel Straus

NEW YORK–In its fourth season at the former New York State Theater and its second under a new name, Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance completed its marathon three-week run April 3. One of the last full-time troupes presenting a mid-20th century modern dance ethos, PTAMD dancers deserve medals for stamina. They achieved […]

Published: November 25, 2015
Category: review

Twyla Tharp's 50th: The Irony Is Passé

By Rachel Straus

NEW YORK–Twyla Tharp’s 50th anniversary tour made its final stop at the former New York State Theater, with a set of new works (seen Nov. 17) as performed by 13 fleet-footed, unique, virtuoso dancers. The experience totaled two hours, but it felt like more. The seven males and six females—some who have […]

Published: December 17, 2013
Category: review

A Shot of Adrenalin for the Vienna Staatsballett

By Rachel Straus

VIENNA—The former Paris Opera Ballet Étoile Manuel Legris took the reigns of the Vienna Staatsballett in 2010, infusing a company that had developed a reputation for being a ballet museum with a shot of 21st-century dancing adrenalin. Legris’s modernizing hasn’t bruised his financial support: the Staatsoper budget for opera and ballet is […]

Published: December 6, 2013
Category: review

Famed Spanish Troupe Struggles for a Stylistic Core

By Rachel Straus

Nacho Duato

MADRID–Three years ago, former Paris Opera Ballet principal dancer José Carlos Martinez took over the decidedly un-balletic national dance company of Spain (the Compañía Nacional de Danza). Back then, the Madrid-based troupe’s identity was synonymous with the works of Nacho Duato [pictured], whose two-decade leadership and ballet-meets-modern, folk-inflected choreography […]

Published: August 20, 2013
Category: profile

Kyle Abraham at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

PillowNotes

by Rachel Straus

The PillowNotes series comprises essays commissioned from our Scholars-in-Residence and others to provide audiences with a broader context for viewing dance.

Like the cinematically abrupt scene changes in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, Kyle Abraham’s shifting dance portals in Pavement foster a dreamlike landscape. In his newest work, Abraham employs paradoxical moods […]