Category: Dance Theatre
Facing Problems, On Stage and Off: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and DANCE NATION
Above: Mr. Ratchett (Jim Roof) and Hercule Poirot (Jeffrey Blair Cornell) face off in MURDER ON...
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Triangle Theatre and Dance 2023: The Best of What We Saw
Since end-of-year wrap-ups inevitably use a lot of figures, let’s start with the most improbable one of all: 338, for the number of theater and dance productions staged in North Carolina’s Triangle region during 2023. For those counting, it was an all-time high in terms of yearly output for the area, a remarkable comeback for the two art forms that had been most threatened during the first three years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
No, we couldn’t see them all. The curated lists here of superlatives come from the one-hundred shows we did view from the region’s major companies and selected up-and-comers through the year.
The only way a region produces 338 different shows is with a large pool of artists and an even more extensive community of support. Those whose job it is to fret over even good news wondered at year’s-end how sustainable such a level of output could be. We’ll get an answer to that question in the coming year.
Read MoreBig Dance Theatre: A Playful Story of Finding the Meaning of Purpose
Performing on University of North Carolina’s Memorial Hall stage, Carolina Performing Arts welcomed Big Dance Theater to hold a bold conversation centered on literature and movement. Part of the CPA Series, UNC held a...
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Thalian Hall: The Nutcracker for Young Audiences
Holiday season in the U.S. inevitably brings with it performances of The Nutcracker, with its...
Read MoreCP Dance Theatre’s Sunlight and Solstice Balances Seasons, Continents, and Testaments
Compared with Charlotte Youth Ballet’s annual production of Tchaikovsky’s beloved Nutcracker, Central Piedmont Dance Theatre’s fall presentation, Sunlight and Solstice, drew only a small fraction of the huge...
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The People’s Collection, Reimagined, Weekend Party at the NC Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art is one of our state’s great treasures, and its goal of bringing the fine arts to everyone and engaging with its surrounding community is exemplary. I was so pleased to get to tour NCMA on Tuesday morning during a media preview of the entirely reorganized and revitalized (not to mention rebranded!) museum. The central purpose of this visit was to view what NCMA is calling The People’s Collection, Reimagined; its current display of over 1000 artworks that include gifted works, original commissions, and international loans.
Exciting new changes in the West Building include better wayfinding and organization – including bilingual English and Spanish signage), through galleries that have been creatively diversified. Director Valerie Hillings spoke about the opportunity the NCMA has had to examine new perspectives and tell new stories through the reorganization of the museum, presenting new and underrepresented artists and contextualizing the historical pieces to make them more accessible to modern audiences. She reminded that “all art is contemporary when it is made,” so it was important for the curators to focus on how the artworks were utilized, displayed, or considered both at their creation and over time.
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The People’s Collection, Reimagined, Weekend Party at the NC Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art is one of our state’s great treasures, and its goal of bringing the fine arts to everyone and engaging with its surrounding community is exemplary. I was so pleased to get to tour NCMA on Tuesday morning during a media preview of the entirely reorganized and revitalized (not to mention rebranded!) museum. The central purpose of this visit was to view what NCMA is calling The People’s Collection, Reimagined; its current display of over 1000 artworks that include gifted works, original commissions, and international loans.
Exciting new changes in the West Building include better wayfinding and organization – including bilingual English and Spanish signage), through galleries that have been creatively diversified. Director Valerie Hillings spoke about the opportunity the NCMA has had to examine new perspectives and tell new stories through the reorganization of the museum, presenting new and underrepresented artists and contextualizing the historical pieces to make them more accessible to modern audiences. She reminded that “all art is contemporary when it is made,” so it was important for the curators to focus on how the artworks were utilized, displayed, or considered both at their creation and over time.
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The People’s Collection, Reimagined, Weekend Party at the NC Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art is one of our state’s great treasures, and its goal of bringing the fine arts to everyone and engaging with its surrounding community is exemplary. I was so pleased to get to tour NCMA on Tuesday morning during a media preview of the entirely reorganized and revitalized (not to mention rebranded!) museum. The central purpose of this visit was to view what NCMA is calling The People’s Collection, Reimagined; its current display of over 1000 artworks that include gifted works, original commissions, and international loans.
Exciting new changes in the West Building include better wayfinding and organization – including bilingual English and Spanish signage), through galleries that have been creatively diversified. Director Valerie Hillings spoke about the opportunity the NCMA has had to examine new perspectives and tell new stories through the reorganization of the museum, presenting new and underrepresented artists and contextualizing the historical pieces to make them more accessible to modern audiences. She reminded that “all art is contemporary when it is made,” so it was important for the curators to focus on how the artworks were utilized, displayed, or considered both at their creation and over time.
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ADF Opening Night:Pilobolus’ Big Five-Oh! is Big Fun-Oh!
Pilobolus is celebrating 50 years of rebellious art making. In 1971, Moses Pendleton, Jonathan Wolken and Steve Johnson created their first dance composition ‘Pilobolus’ and the name stuck. The opening night at this year’s American Dance Festival spanned works from 1975 to an ADF-commissioned world premiere. Co-artistic directors Renee Jaworski and Matt Kent, who are also former company members of Pilobolus, introduced the dancers: Nathaniel Buchsbaum, Quincy Ellis, Paul Liu, Hannah Klinkman, Marlon Feliz, and North Carolina native Zachary Weiss. Full administration and dancer bios can be found here.
Untitled (1975) by Robert Dennis featured costume design by Kitty Daly and Malcolm McCormick: Two women, on a summer evening, are in a whispered conversation. Assisted by male dancers under their dresses, the women are dizzyingly elevated, and their dresses elongate. Two men, dashingly dressed, enter and try to gain their attention. They duel to the death for the women’s attention. Superbly acted by Klinkman and Feliz, the women end by rocking away as the sun fades on their summer evening.
Read MoreCONTRA-TIEMPO Brings Joy to a Young Audience With JoyUS JustUS
CONTRA-TIEMPO, a highly acclaimed Los Angeles-based dance theatre group, has performed throughout the U.S. and the Americas. Artistic director, dancer, and choreographer Ana Maria Alvarez and her group have been compared to...
Read MoreReaders’ Theatre, Dance, and Storytelling Combine in UNC Process Series’ An Evening of New Work
This past weekend, five student artists brought their works-in-process to the stage of the UNC Process Series, which showcases new works as they are brought to fruition. In two performances, four new works-in-process were...
Read MoreMoving Poets Add New Musical & Visual Phantasmagoria to a Detained Immigrant’s Upside-Down View of Heaven
Launched in 1997 with an eerie multi-layered, multimedia production of Dracula in the crumbling ruins of the Carolina Theatre, Moving Poets has always been eclectic in its use of artforms and – devoutly edgy and...
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