Reviews

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

The full cast of Can You Feel It? basks in applause under blue stage lighting following their performance at the Asian Arts Initiative Black Box Theatre.
Photo: Nylah Jackson
  • Reviews

Still Sitting? This Is Your Cue.

Lauren Berlin

Nylah Jackson’s Can You Feel It? Invites Us to Stand Up and Feel Something….Anything…

Dancer Aylin Bayaz looks directly into the camera as she lifts one arm above her hand, holding onto the golden tasseled bottom fabric of her dress. Her black hair is slicked back. She looks both triumphant and joyful. 
Photo: Richard Clarck
  • Reviews

Many Acts, But Only One Dance 

Megan Mizanty

Flamenco for small cities—in person and in demand. 

Four women gather onstage, three seated and one hovering above, creating a palm-reading tableau together. They wear black-and-gold metallic sarees and ornamental jewelry that adorns the crown of their heads. The dancer whose palm is being read wears a smug smile on her face while her two friends and the palm-reader seem puzzled, hands to their chins in contemplating her fate.
Photo: Navya Sree Kupparaju
  • Reviews

Life-Cycles: Love After Tragedy

ankita

Rituals for the masses