Rachel’s blog @ View Rachel @ Juilliard Dance | Published: August 20, 2013 Category: profilePillowNotes 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 […] Published: December 1, 2011 Category: historyIsadora Duncan By Rachel Straus The moment when Isadora Duncan throws her head back in ecstasy as she dances at the Theatre of Dionysus in Greece (preserved in the 1903 photograph above) captures Duncan’s archetypal performance qualities: supple, improvisatory, transcendent. Arguably the most important American-born dance artist of the early 20th century, Duncan forged her […] Published: November 14, 2011 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus NEW YORK — Like her legendary predecessor Anna Pavlova, Nina Ananiashvili is that rare ballet dancer whose powers don’t weaken with age. Pavlova toured the world performing “Dying Swan” into her forties; Ananiashvili, now 46, graced the Avery Fisher Hall stage on Nov. 5 as the Swan, one of four works danced […] Published: November 7, 2011 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus NEW YORK — The Fall for Dance Festival is a two-week terpsichorean bonanza. It harkens back to vaudeville’s glory days, with its diverse array of talent and cheap seats. Now in its eighth year, the festival isn’t flagging (like the economy) or sputtering into dismal repetition (like certain unnamed politicians’ speeches). In […] Published: August 1, 2011 Category: historyBy Rachel Straus On the brink of World War II, German choreographer Kurt Jooss arrived in New York with his company to perform. Before curtain, Jooss learned that some black audience members had been barred from their seats. Jooss told the theater administration that unless they amended their whites-only policy, there would be no […] Published: May 1, 2011 Category: historyBy Rachel Straus In the “Blushing Ballet” number of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916, the curtain opens on a replica of the dance tableau in Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides. Moments later, this high-art vision, saturated with old-world European sophistication, changes: Heavyset comedian Sam B. Hardy plods across the stage as the femme fatale Zoebeide […] Published: August 15, 2010 Category: profilePILLOWNOTES by Rachel Straus The PillowNotes series comprises essays commissioned from our Scholars-in-Residence to provide audiences with a broader context for viewing dance. For someone so attuned to others’ inner lives, it was surprising to hear Kyle Abraham say, in a recent interview, “I don’t like to show my emotions on a social level.” But […] |
