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Male dance artist Kun-Yang Lin balances on one leg in flowing red silk, hands flexed gracefully, looking downward while holding a poised dance pose.
Photo: Bill H
  • Interviews

To Move in the In-Between: The Legacy of Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers

Lauren Berlin

Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers, among the country’s top Asian American dance companies, marks its final season with a lasting legacy.

Choreographer Charles Askegard guides a poignant moment as Oksana Maslova collapses into Sterling Baca’s arms. Her knees are drawn to her chest, toes pointed, arms extended overhead, lifted off the floor, expressing grief while supported by her partner.
Photo: Adrenaline Film
  • Interviews

The Art of Rising: Ballet Responds to the War in Ukraine

Lauren Berlin

Dance, War, and the Work That Became the Most Important of Maslova’s Career.

A woman sits with her back to us while sitting at a keyboard. A candle on top of it illuminates the faces of about fifty people who sit facing her in a dim orange color. On the shadowy walls we can see framed paintings, a clock, and an artificial head of an elephant.
Photo: Azu Rodriguez
  • Reviews

From the Chrysalis: ayo ohs´ A Minor Relief

Brendan McCall

ayo ohs shows how making art is the only way to move on from loss

Wen Hui, a Chinese woman dressed in a red striped shirt and black pants, looks down past her nose at Japanese counterpart, Eiko Otake, while reaching a claw-shaped hand out to Otake’s face. Otake wears a baggy white dress that hides her form. One of her hands meets Wen Hui’s upper arm, while the other pulls Wen Hui’s hand to her face.
Photo: Zhou Huiyini
  • Reviews

War is (in)human

ankita

We are all tangled. Do you understand?

Various cast members of The Nutcracker at Ballet Theatre of Scranton pose and smile against a white background. They gaze at one another, wearing costumes from the show: tutus, a giant mouse costume, men in leggings and boots. The women wear diamond crowns and curls in their buns, and everyone looks delighted to be with one another.
Photo: Ballet Theatre of Scranton
  • Interviews

A Tale of Two Cities: “The Nutcracker” in Pennsylvania

Megan Mizanty

A behind-the-scenes look at a beloved annual performance.

A dancer in a dark green dress and point shoes balances on her right toes, her left leg lifted and pointed behind her. She hold her hands in fists against her face
  • Reviews

Grim.Grotesque.Grand.

Lauren Berlin

Philadelphia Ballet’s Evening of Horror gloriously affirms its stunning power to probe the monster within

The Of Dishes and Dreams cast in blue Thai-style garments used for restaurant work. Eyes focus on choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat as the ensemble walks around her. Keerati is being lifted into the air in a hug, legs piked together, reaching up to the sky. On the left side of the image, Claude “CJ” Johnson, holds another point of focus – legs open in a wide stance, bending deep at the knees, shoulders and hips to one diagonal, while he peeks playfully toward Keerati in the opposite corner. Kitchen items made of plastic and twine balance precariously in the background.
  • Reviews

Found in Translation

ankita

A child of immigrants dances in her parents’ kitchen

Tender and frail. Eiko Otake, a slender, elderly Japanese woman dressed in a crumpled white gown, brow furrowed, worriedly looks at the ground in front of her. With bent limbs, elbows prominent, she clutches a woman familiar to her close to her body. Dressed in a lightly pinstriped red blouse with steel-colored trousers, this woman, Wen Hui, leans to the ground, gazing down at the edge of her fingertips.
Photo: Jingqui Guan
  • Interviews

Old Lessons for New Wars

ankita

We have all known war, but have we learned? 

Image Description: The photo is taken from the balcony, looking down on the audience clustered in a U-shape against and besides the white gallery walls, around the black chalk stage, where Baldoz is kneeling to scrawl on the chalk and Vo is standing, legs wide, behind the center of three black megaphones. Some of the audience is shadowed, people stand, or sit on the ground. From this angle, Vo is in the very bottom of the photo, the top of their head, arms, and their bare back visible under a soft spotlight. With white chalk, Baldoz has written in huge letters and small, at all angles, and in a mix of cursive and print. One word, “HANOI”, is legible even from the balcony view.
Photo: Albert Yee
  • Reviews

Translation Again, and Again

Xander Cobb

How do we become available to being possessed? What enters us when we are empty? In Vo’s view, presence is emptiness.

Two thousand feet below rolling gray clouds, a woman walks away down the rock slab trail off the summit of Mount Moriah. She traipses between squat, sturdy, coniferous trees in her fluffy brown zip up, teal leggings, and worn hiking books. A water bottle threatens to tumble out the outer right pocket of her blue Kelty backpack. The backpack has seen some things; it is nearly 20 years old.
Photo: Allison Larme
  • thINKpieces

Not a Dancer, If Only for a Little While

Jennifer Passios

And what if that isn’t a crisis?