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Dance
Collaborations: A Dance Concert
Submitted to the Creative Writing Corner by Gabrielle Schecker BACK IN MARCH, I attended the College of Charleston Department of Theatre’s annual dance concert, Collaborations. At first, I couldn’t make a connection between the title and the program. When the lights dimmed and the curtains opened, I concentrated on the dancers, the songs, the... Read »
Collaborations at College of Charleston
WE EXPECT ONE ARTIST to produce one work of art, but what if several artists combine their visions in a work of art? Generally something unexpected occurs, especially for the originators themselves. Such an approach to the creative process is an exciting phenomenon that many artists aren’t willing to share, but at the College... Read »
The Beauty and Inspiration of Dance
SOME IN THE Gaillard audience for this Charleston Concert Association production on Monday night were surprised to see two Russian National Ballet Theatre events on the program rather than the one advertised—Romeo and Juliet. Fortunately, however, surprise did not lead to disappointment. First up was the delicate Chopiniana, a 1907 work by choreographer Mikhail... Read »
The Grand Prix of Dance
A GRAND PRIX nowadays is thought of as a sporting event and, in the case of race cars, a fast one. For Ballet Grand Prix, which performed last week at the Gaillard, the concepts of ‘sporting’ and ‘fast’ certainly applied. Some 30 dancers raced through 22 pieces in 90 minutes with no breaks other... Read »
CBT Takes Screen to Stage
IN CHARLESTON BALLET’s performance, “The Golden Oscar,” two choreographers (Stephen Gabriel and Jonathan Tabbert) took nine movies from recent years and translated them from the screen to the stage. The dances were a distillation of the films, going straight to the human condition and using the vocabulary of movement to speak what actors, cameramen,... Read »
Ballet’s Strange Bird
DARREN ARONOFSKY’s film, the ballet psycho-thriller “Black Swan” starring Natalie Portman, has received a love/hate reaction, much like the feeling I have with ballet in general. My head spins at the thought of the premise of the story: a ballet dancer, ostensibly with New York City Ballet (they are at Lincoln Center, though they... Read »
Apollo’s Angels
BENEATH THE PATINA of ballet lies a deeper story that you usually don’t think about when you watch a performance of La Bayadère or Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet. This new history of ballet, written by a former ballerina, provides unique insight into a multilayered world of choreographers, composers, dancers, and impresarios. But what... Read »
Another Nut to Crack
NO, THERE IS NO mistake: CharlestonToday is posting another piece on the Nutcracker. In New York City this year there were more than three adaptations of Petipa’s pearl, and dance writer Alastair Macaulay went cross country seeing as many Nutcrackers as he could stomach—so you see, a lot of ink has already been spent... Read »
Cracking the Nut of Ballet
MY FAVORITE piece of choreography in this year’s Nutcracker by Charleston Ballet Theatre was surprisingly simple. At one moment, as the Nutcracker (Jonathan Tabbert) and Maria (Jennifer Muller) stood next to each other at the back corner of the stage, they began to move diagonally toward the audience. As they did, he wrapped his... Read »
Nutcracker Brings it All Home
THE HOLIDAYS are not complete without the requisite performance of the timeless classic The Nutcracker, seemingly performed in every city throughout the world in some size shape or form for decades and decades. The question then begs: how do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it relevant? Charleston Ballet Theatre manages to... Read »
