The theatre’s energy changed as the orchestra went dark for the third and final part of the night’s mixed program, sizzling with an electricity that transcended your usual World Premiere static. Since her first piece for the National Ballet of Canada, Emergence, premiered in 2009, Crystal Pite has become globally renown and sought after.
Read MoreThough it would eventually be dignified by Giuseppe Verdi as ‘the most beautiful opera buffa in existence’, the very first 1816 performance of Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville was bumbled enough to rival its intentional comedic content.
Read More“Even the worm was given desire” declares Friedrich Schiller’s soaring poem written for Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the iconic climax of his 9th symphony and score of ProArteDanza’s The 9th!: a finely yet boldly crafted treatise on the defiant human spirit, by Roberto Campanella and Robert Glumbek.
Read MoreEach of the pieces presented in Program 2 of “Toronto’s premier international dance festival” featured live music, something I hope Fall For Dance North will continue to prioritize as they move forward from their 5th year hosting dance companies from across the globe.
Read MoreResonance uses the irresistible beat of live musicians to chart the stages of a popular revolution as it unfurls, infects, and blends each individual with the blurred flow of the masses.
Read MoreThe world needs more of what dance: made in canada / fait au canada festival’s closing performance offered simply by incubating a safe environment for male artists to share deeply and openly. Curated by the festival director herself, each work features all-male dancers exploring the roles men can engage, transgress, and transcend with each other.
Read MoreUnion, communion, and communication were frustrated and fulfilled by varying degrees in each of the pieces Lina Cruz chose for her series, with speech and the desire to speak lining much of the staged movement.
Read MoreMuch like the contained intensity of a therapy room, limbo offers a venue parallel to reality in which the soul can confront its deepest shames and the self-reproaches. Playwright Brendee Green avoids the comforting myth that love can heal all wounds, instead exploring the circumstances in which a soul might forgive themselves for ambiguous transgressions, or might choose not to return to their body at all.
Read MoreA grandly chosen champagne-soaked farewell role for esteemed principal dancer Xiao Nan Yu, The Merry Widow is a rare piece that gives a company the chance to show off while managing to unite comedy and drama. This effervescent world of forgivable excess is studded with moments of sincere, rapturous yearning between the two leading couples.
Read MoreWith thrilling range and dancers that move as both wave and particle, Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre staged five enchanting works with an ensemble of promising young students. Featuring two world premieres and recent hits from five diverse choreographers, these works examine contemporary issues such as toxic masculinity and ancient preoccupations like achieving higher consciousness and communion with the unknown through live performance.
Read MoreAlaska Thunderfuck is the neutron star of drag: a regular-sized star with the concealed density of a hundred suns. Her flickering identities contained in one are mesmerizing in a way that few performers have ever been capable of.
Read More“While James is decidedly a land mammal, you’d have to visit the aquarium to see anything ripple through reality the way Lunkina does as a Wili…”
Read More“Twenty winters on stage, The Nutcracker remains a beloved production that can still make an icy breeze feel like a thrilling, redemptive brush with a gentler world.”
Read MorePerceptively identifying the spirit of the songs and their lyrical substance, they expand rhythmically on the original album’s subtext. Because of this, Legend: Remixed seems to be a way for Ziggy, Stephan, and some very accomplished fans to pick up where the jam session left off, keeping the legend alive.
Read MoreWith a mind called mad and a body that was described as the vessel of a god, fin-de-siècle superstar Vaslav Nijinsky elevated and expanded what ballet as an art form could be in the 20th century. And if Neumeier’s pressurized depiction of this man’s life is incorporated into more ballet companies’ repertoires, then he’ll be that transformative once-in-a-century voice for the 21st.
Read MoreWith enough familiarity to captivate and enough uncertainty to keep us in suspense, Downton Abbey’s momentum is still on the upswing, ready to release forward into the modern world.
Read MoreWe know zombies like to eat people; it’s not personal. But humanity’s savagery proves to be far more grisly as the third season takes us to the two parallel societies created by survivors.
Read MoreThough the album does not, by any means, burn the foundation that The Smashing Pumpkins have invested decades building, it is committed to the present, to the cycle of impulse, reaction and artistic choice as it occurs from breath to breath.
Read MoreGarnering widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards – including the Juno for Songwriter of the Year in both 2009 and 2011 – one of the most intriguing things about City and Colour is its very sense of journey, of a man in perpetual transit finally accepting himself as a traveller who need never reach a destination.
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