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Michael Sakamoto's profile is shown in light against a dark background, his left hand is raised, his eyes closed.
Photo: Cedric Arnold
  • Reviews

Michael Sakamoto– Intercultural Mixologist

Jonathan Stein

Boundaries dissolve in Sakamoto and DJ Spooky’s new Butoh and Hip-Hop multi-media work, time/life/beauty..

A crowd of predominantly white people wear white dresses, t-shirts, and gauze veils draped over their heads, faces visible. Most have painted their faces white with pink around their eyes and are wearing KN95 masks. They are walking forward toward the camera, a tall shadowed building, tree foliage, stop lights, and a square of blue sky behind them. Two people in the front open their mouths mid-song and scrunch their eyebrows together, maybe from the sun and maybe with concern. Deeper into the crowd, people hold a white banner with bold black letters, “WE ARE HAUNTED BY WHAT WE SEE IN GAZA.”
Photo: Rachael Warriner
  • Reviews, thINKpieces

There is a Shoah in Gaza

Xander Cobb

Philadelphian Jews dance and sing in protest of Mural Arts Holocaust Memorial Mural that excludes Arabic and Palestine.

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?

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

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.

Four performers dressed in silver, with black caps, pause with their backs to the audience, three in chairs and one standing. They gaze at four shimmering towers of silver fringe.
Photo: Cherylynn Tsushima
  • Reviews

The Future is Disabled (and wearing silver fringe)

Rachel DeForrest Repinz

The Next TiMes interweaves holistic access offerings with shiny, futuristic aesthetics.

Six dancers in grey jumpsuits sprawl across the top of a concrete wall in a large warehouse-like space. They fall on top of each other, with arms extending out in different directions, fingers and hair blurred as if caught in motion.
Photo: Ben Bloodwell
  • Reviews

Filling Empty Pools

Zoe Farnsworth

The Naked Stark flows between performance and interactive experience at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center.

Four dancers move among scattered votive candles in a darkened studio, the studio lights off, their forms illuminated only by the flickering flames.
Photo: Lauren Berlin
  • Reviews

This One is Dedicated to the Bunheads

Lauren Berlin

Where Echoes Remain by Marina Kec Explores the Psyche of a Ballerina