Likeness of love
In their second visit to Boston, Nederlands Dans Theater 2 proves why choreographers flock to create their most experimental work on the company’s blank canvas of young talent.
Hyperlinking through the museum
Just as their combinations started to tire however, the door to the theatre opened, permitting a glimmer of music and lights to waft in from the outside. My curiosity was piqued as the audience began thinning, with members of the ICA crew using makeshift wheelbarrows to casually cart them away to this mystery performance outside. With a mild frisson, I wondered when I might be picked off too.
Humanity without its core
Wayne McGregor’s genre of choreography is most often referred to as contemporary ballet, but he himself has never been trained in ballet, and instead traces his roots back to ballroom dancing and disco. His movements know no bounds, with limbs wending through the air as if having a mind of their own, and dancers flowing into and around one another as if unable to grasp the concept of tangible matter.
More foolhardy than fated
Paulo Arrais’s and Misa Kuranaga’s Romeo and Juliet chases an immature infatuation to its fateful end. With strong overtones of innocence and gaiety, their supposed tragedy is robbed of its weight.
Contemporary comparisons with the Boston Ballet
The triple bill showcases three of today’s most prominent choreographers — Jorma Elo, Justin Peck and William Forsythe — each faced with the challenge of bringing shape to sound through a non-narrative work. This grants us the rare opportunity to compare and contrast their unique takes on George Balanchine’s classic charge, to “see the music, hear the dance”.
Shedding light on campus
Light Matrix, as the work of art is officially titled, is part of the List Center’s Percent-For-Art program, which has been commissioning art for campus renovations since 1968.
The Wild Party
The piece is relatively fast-paced throughout, with one dramatic turn following another and songs flowing almost like a stream of consciousness.
The Boston Ballet presents Onegin
Ever since the Boston Ballet first brought this John Cranko classic to the U.S., Onegin has been a fan favorite. It is one of the most moving pieces in the classical ballet repertoire, telling the story of the naïve Tatiana Larina who falls in love with the brooding Eugene Onegin. But the older Onegin finds her childish infatuation tiresome, and spurns her — only to have the tables turn when he comes to his senses years later.
Tweeting in the theater
The audience is gathered in the cozy Oberon Theater, with performance areas spread out between and around us. We are embedded in what promises to be a novel theatrical experience — an engaging mixture of dialogue, dance, and video.
Brooklyn holds a mirror up to every college student
Anyone on this campus knows what it feels like to leave home for a new place. The sights and sounds are different, the culture unfamiliar, the knowledge eye-opening. Everything around you is new — but surprisingly, after some time, you discover that you are new as well. Every experience starts to impact what you believe, how you act, and eventually, the very core of who you are. And never has this evolution been so perfectly captured as in the film Brooklyn.
Pairing young musicians with young listeners
The Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra is a vibrant group of 12- to 21-year-olds who devote their Saturday afternoons to practicing together and putting up roughly three performances a year. Many are currently in college as well, including MIT freshman Jueun Lee on the cello. Formed in 2012 as an offshoot of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, BPYO aims to provide opportunities for young musicians to grow.
A visual feast at the ballet
Men balancing on each other like surfboards, women perching precariously on their partners’ napes, a human truss forming from a lattice of dancers – these were some of the radical visual treats greeting the audience in this season’s opener at the Boston Ballet. A surprising 40 years since its inception, this production marks the first performance by a North American company of John Neumeier’s Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler.
A rousing mixture of old and new at the BSO
The Boston Symphony Orchestra moves from strength to strength, following its successful season opener with another exceptional program — putting together a new composition by Sebastian Currier, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, and a particularly spellbinding rendition of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2.