Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:31:29 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Aeron Kopriva :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Aeron+Kopriva istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/borrowing-from-balanchine/21926/ Mon, 24 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST If the spring season of American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House emits the pure white light of classicism, then the fall repertory at City Center displays a spectrum of shorter 20th-century works created within the classical tradition. This weekend, the company premiered "Kaleidoscope," a mesmerizing new ballet shaped in the old imperial style by the young and talented choreographer Peter Quanz. A pastiche of elements from Balanchine's neoclassical oeuvre, "Kaleidoscope" is... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/alone-with-the-stars/21531/ Fri, 14 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST Humans have often looked to the stars to understand the universe and our place in it, decoding their destiny as an explorer would chart his course to the land of spices. In the night sky, our constellations are ablaze with myths of angry gods and dead emperors, and immortal tales of vanity and jealousy. In Bebe Miller's enchanting new work, "Landing/Place," which premiered at Dance Theater Workshop on Wednesday, images of her dancers wheel across the backdrop like a zodiac across the heavens... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/east-west-red-all-over/21441/ Thu, 13 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST Zhang Yimou is among the first generation of filmmakers to work under the restrictive eye of the People's Republic of China; he is also among the first to have his movies distributed abroad, where they have gained international acclaim. His "Raise the Red Lantern" (1991), which depicted the concubinage of a university student to a feudal lord, was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Mr. Zhang's adaptation of the movie to the stage, performed by the National Ballet of... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/channeling-hiroshima/21218/ Mon, 10 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST Butoh, a modern Japanese dance form, has infiltrated the rest of the world as a cross-cultural id. Known for its shocking and enigmatic imagery, it was created to put a face on the inward grief of postwar Japan. Today the suffering has been generalized by a new generation of Japanese artists raised on anime. As a result, butoh has gained wide popularity and reached an unclassifiable level of diversity in performance. Ko Murobushi, a recognized master of the form, looked back to its origins in... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/fun-games-with-balls-ballet/20957/ Tue, 4 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST As physical spectacle, the relationship between sport and dance goes back at least as far as the Olympic athlete. A fifth-century Athenian sculpture depicts youths playing a popular ball game as they balk and chivvy in bas-relief. On Sunday evening at the City Center, Terpsichore wore her sneakers in a very different kind of game: the postmodern pastime of precision ball passing. In the final program of the Fall for Dance Festival, Charles Moulton premiered his "48 Person Precision Ball Passing... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/woman-who-mistook-a-door-for-her-body/20884/ Mon, 3 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST Some dances catch your eye; others steal your heart. Joanna Haigood's fanciful, lighthearted, and technically lean "Dance in a Doorway" does both. The short work, which made its New York premiere at the Fall for Dance Festival on Thursday, also tickles the imagination. A whimsical adventure through space, it offers a glimpse of freedom and wonder in the most domestic of settings. All weekend the festival, which wrapped up last night, spoiled dance audiences with an embarrassment of riches. And... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/difference-between-art-and-design/20813/ Fri, 30 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST With the curtain raised, dancers warmed up in plain view as the audience filed into the Miller Theatre on Wednesday night. They sketched out center combinations on the new "marley" floor installed only five days ago. The performance venue, usually associated with classical music, offered the dance public a candid opportunity to see members of New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet together on the same stage. The grand occasion was a program called "Watching Ligeti Move," a performance of... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/riotous-good-cheer/20738/ Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST What do slap dance, a clown, modern ballet, and more than 80 yards of white silk have in common? Not much. But they all took the stage Tuesday night at the City Center, when five very different companies kicked off the second annual Fall for Dance Festival. Designed to lure a new and untapped audience to dance, the festival is a grab-bag of eclecticism that promises to jumble anybody's fixed ideas. A ticket remains only $10, making Fall for Dance second only to the national minimum wage in its... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/travel/commuters-upstate/20504/ Mon, 26 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST The generic term "upstate" covers a lot of ground in New York. In his book "Pages From a Cold Island," Fredrick Exley dedicates a vehement footnote to what exactly constitutes upstate New York: "To a Manhattanite 'upstate' means 'the uthuh siduh Oddsley' ('the other side of Ardsley')," he writes. "But to true upstaters this notion verges on the laughably blasphemous." One must be within eyeshot, at least, of the Adirondacks, or preferably of Exley's hometown in Jefferson County. But the real... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/restrained-sequence-of-manners/20531/ Mon, 26 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST Arococo pavilion looked out onto a beaux arts-style garden in the scena frons of "Hommage a Marie Salle," a program by the New York Baroque Dance Company, presented Friday evening inside Florence Gould Hall. Only footsteps away from Midtown, the painted backdrop plunged the audience in steep, nearly vertigo inducing perspective down a central garden path, around a mythological statue, and toward manicured hedgerows that narrowed to a vanishing point in the distance. The company's performance... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/it-always-pays-to-take-a-chance-on-merce/20163/ Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST Storm clouds threatened to rain out Friday night's installment of Evening Stars, the free weeklong dance festival in lower Manhattan, adding yet another variable to the already chancy operations of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Some 5,000 dance fans gathered beneath a canopy of sycamores on the Battery Park lawn, waiting in suspense for the company's sole appearance in New York City this year. In a version of the famous anecdote about a Western audience listening rapturously to Ravi... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/aging-of-a-modern-classic/18956/ Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:00:00 EST Heavenly bodies orbit harmoniously around the human comedy in Mark Morris's "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato," an evening-length dance visualizing Handel's oratorio to John Milton's poems of the same name. The work is among Mr. Morris's earliest pieces still performed with regularity, and as his troupe's performance Thursday night at the New York State Theater made clear, it continues to loom as a modern classic - in spite of the rather self-congratulatory coffee-table book put out a few... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/back-from-the-dead/17840/ Mon, 1 Aug 2005 00:00:00 EST "The Pharaoh's Daughter" portrays an Egyptian princess who returns to life in an Englishman's opium sleep. But this past weekend, it was the rebirth of the ballet itself that was being celebrated as the Bolshoi wrapped up its two-week run at the Metropolitan Opera House with the American premiere of Pierre Lacotte's reconstruction. Much of Marius Petipa's choreography has been buried in the sands of time since the original was last performed in 1926. The mummified remains - dance notations, old... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/funny-farm/17654/ Wed, 27 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST Something is wrong with the ballerina. During her late-night rendezvous in a forest clearing, she teeters awkwardly on point and fumbles through even the most basic steps. She destroys the classical line in her top-heavy arabesques, looking altogether out of place on stage with the world-class Bolshoi company. A shameful performance? Not quite: The ballerina is a man. Travesty roles dominate the second act of "The Bright Stream," a comic ballet from the 1930s that was banned under Stalin and... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/spotlight-on-the-proletariat/17504/ Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST Ever since the ballet "Spartacus" made its London premiere in 1969, it has been a standard-bearer in the West for the bold theatrics and assertive phrasing associated with the Bolshoi. Based on the true story of a Thracian gladiator's uprising against the Roman Empire, the work dramatizes the oppressed underclass's struggle against a corrupt regime. On Friday night, the company captured the Soviet-era monumentality of the work in a strong performance at the Metropolitan Opera House. Today, the... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/dance-as-cartography/17337/ Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST Drawing on his background in Chinese opera and calligraphy, Shen Wei creates arresting tableaux that defy the traditional boundaries among painting, dance, and music. In his celebrated "Connect Transfer," presented last summer as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, dancers spread paint across a broad canvas as they moved, recording their ephemeral motions in swirling arabesques of black and red. On Tuesday evening, his company returned to the New York State Theater with a world premiere of... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/contorted-traditions/17272/ Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST Last week the Lincoln Center Festival presented "I La Galigo," Robert Wilson's three-hour Indonesian epic that followed the actions of divinities through the millennia. Mugiyono Kasido, a Javanese performance artist who debuted in America on Monday as part of the festival, also invites cosmic comparisons. But whereas Mr. Wilson staged his spectacle using more than 50 actors, dancers, and musicians, Mr. Kasido had only himself in the Clarke Studio Theater, a black box on the top floor of the... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/out-at-sea-with-pleasure/16989/ Thu, 14 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST Hold a conch shell to your ear, and you can hear the ocean. In the palm of your hand, spindrift crashes on distant shores. The gimmick continues to give pleasure long after you learn it is all in your head. Both responses - a sense of giddy dislocation, as well as a heightened awareness of your own subjectivity - can be found in Merce Cunningham's "Ocean," the evening-length work that opened at the Lincoln Center Festival on Tuesday. "Ocean" marks the final collaboration between Mr. Cunningham... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/mood-swings/16917/ Wed, 13 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST When ballet master Filippo Taglioni fussed with his daughter Marie's unusually long arms in the early 18th century, little did he know (or maybe he did) that she would come to define the lithesome movements associated with Romantic ballet. She manifested an ethereal presence onstage, matched only by the earthbound point work of that other prima ballerina of the day, Fanny Elssler. Both styles come together in "Giselle," the oldest ballet still performed regularly today, which returned on Monday... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/blessing-and-a-curse/16475/ Tue, 5 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST In some productions of "Swan Lake," the mood gathers ominously like a storm. In American Ballet Theatre's version, which opened on Friday, Kevin McKenzie's staging manufactures pathos in the pressurized swell of a wave pool. He condenses the 19th century original to fit our modern attention span. Recently edited down further for PBS's "Dance in America" series, this made-for-TV version nonetheless boasts real MGM grandeur in the theater. The production favors clarity over spectacle. It adopts a... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/buried-treasures/16120/ Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The historical pirate has long been replaced by the eye-patch variety of cultural lore. Retired from the Barbary Coast, he has taken up residence in theme-park log rides, yet another "nice enough bad guy." Once a fearsome raider of mercantile ships, he is now popularized as either a snarling brigand ("Avast, me hearties!") or a charismatic swashbuckler, whose adventures amassing booty are matched only by his romantic conquests. American Ballet Theatre's "Le Corsaire," which opened on Thursday... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/soto-touch/15783/ Tue, 21 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Tremors leading up to Jock Soto's imminent departure have resulted in a spate of works being performed this season, both old and new, that capitalize on his interpretive skills and his unique gift for partnering. Peter Martins's "Morgen," and most recently his "Tala Gaisma," Christopher Wheeldon's "Polyphonia" and "After the Rain," and Lynne Taylor-Corbett's "Chiaroscuro" each cut away at Mr. Soto's bedrock strength, showing hidden veins of deeply expressive ore. On Sunday afternoon, after 25... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/richness-of-national-forms/15707/ Mon, 20 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST All weekend crowds have gathered outdoors on the Lincoln Center Plaza to dance to big-band music at this year's "Midsummer Night Swing." The spectacle has lured some of the less inhibited patrons of the neighboring theaters to join the party during intermission. Kicked in the pants by Latin boogaloo, samba, and zydeco, the scene from the balcony was rhythm's popular uprising against our tonier sensibility. Inside the Metropolitan Opera House, audiences witnessed a similar blend of high and low... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/playing-their-parts/15631/ Fri, 17 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST First you chuckled, then you swooned during Wednesday's program of the New York City Ballet. Jerome Robbins's uproarious "Fanfare" appeases our inner child, while Peter Martins's dreamy "Morgen" speaks to our embarrassed romantic. While these characters may have speaking roles in our imagination, they rarely make public appearances, even under the cover of a darkened theater. Yet the most irascible Scrooge must lighten up to the hijinks of the personified gongs and cymbals in the percussion... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/dancing-nuptials/15555/ Thu, 16 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The peasant wedding, with its colorful scarves and maypole-like festivities, holds a distinct place in the classical repertory. Although it lacks the imperial solemnity of, say, the marriage of Aurora and Desire, it joyously aligns itself with the natural order of the seasons, from man's first sowing to his final harvest. Bronislava Nijinska's wedding in "Les Noces" presents the woman's side, but in Pascal Rioult's new interpretation of the masterwork, which made its premiere Tuesday at the... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/thin-green-line/15305/ Mon, 13 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Donna Uchizono's dances are cerebral, funny, and a little aloof. I am avoiding the term "postmodern," but they are that, too. She enjoys disassembling familiar gestures and asking the audience to follow along. In her Bessie award-winning "Low," she deconstructed the Argentine tango; in her most recent work, "Approaching Green," which was performed this weekend at Danspace, she turns her attention to the universal act of hugging. Scrutinizing this feel-good gesture in multiple vignettes, she... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/very-thin-veil-of-the-white-lady/15188/ Thu, 9 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The libretto for "Raymonda" follows the rivalry between a courtly suitor and a perfumed Saracen, but much of it must have gotten lost in the spice trade. An excuse for countless divertissements, the true purpose behind this age-old scenario is about as thinly veiled as the brocaded scrim that opens and closes the work. No wonder individual entrees from the ballet are performed separately more often than together - the "Grand Pas Hongrois" and the closing "Grand Pas Classique," not to mention... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/horn-of-plenty/14912/ Mon, 6 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Sylvia, the woodland nymph, has been wandering into large American cities lately. Last spotted in Mark Morris's production for the San Francisco Ballet a year ago, she made an auspicious debut on Friday night in the United States premiere of Sir Fredrick Ashton's reprised version by American Ballet Theatre. Although Morris's staging was done "straight" (as people are fond of saying), expressing fidelity to the story, reverence for Leo Delibes's score, and charm to spare, Ashton's "Sylvia" glows... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/great-romance/14846/ Fri, 3 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The plot twists and historical events surrounding the collaboration between Balanchine and Stravinsky have all the trappings of a great romance, or at least a friendly rivalry. The two men grew up in St. Petersburg. Each showed a predilection for the other's art form: Stravinsky savored ballet more than music, while Balanchine trained in earnest as a future concert pianist. When they eventually succumbed to their natural gifts, they brought to their art not the didacticism of a born believer... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/mirror-games/14804/ Thu, 2 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Last year the Emerson Quartet released a recording of Mendelssohn's youthful Octet in E-flat major, a chamber work that reaches symphonic proportions. The quartet managed to double itself with the aid of modern technology: They overdubbed tracks in a studio like a pop single. Peter Martins's own "Octet," a ballet set to Mendelssohn's score, which made its season premiere at the New York City Ballet on Tuesday, uses a similar trick of reduplication. Two teams of four men, wearing either rose or... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/american-all-stars/14599/ Tue, 31 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Despite a name that communicated the athletic connotation of a home-run derby, American Ballet Theatre's "All-Star Tchaikovsky Spectacular" program delivered a fascinating glimpse into the many sides of the composer who helped revolutionize ballet music. Six works performed over the weekend highlighted different aspects of the composer's genius. Balanchine's superb use of the corps in "Ballet Imperial" and "Themes and Variations" drew attention to the complex harmonies of the orchestra. John... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/divided-woman/14467/ Thu, 26 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Vladimir Nabokov once chided in a brief parenthesis that "Anna Karenina," the great novel by Tolstoy, "should in fact be transliterated without the closing 'a' - she was not a ballerina." Well, at least not until now. Boris Eifman's new ballet, which premiered at the City Center on Tuesday, places the famous heroine in pointe shoes after all. Through a series of sparsely lit, ornately staged episodes, Mr. Eifman follows her self-destructive passion from the first adulterous encounter with Count... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/all-grown-up/14374/ Wed, 25 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Even before the chandeliers rose at the Metropolitan Opera House, spirits were running high at the spring gala of the American Ballet Theatre. In this program, the company, embarking on its 65th anniversary season, looked ahead to the coming nine weeks, fluctuating between large-scale panoramas and locket-sized miniatures - even a "Piece d'Occasion" by tap dancer Savion Glover. In "Polovtsian Dances," the landscape is the ranging Eurasian highlands, but the province is Fokine at his most... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/queen-for-a-day/14231/ Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Balanchine wanted the name of every dancer listed in alphabetical order on a program, despite his or her role in a work. He believed there should be no stars in his company, but the company itself should be a star. For Maria Tallchief, this was understandably a sore point; the tactic was much kinder to Merrill Ashley. Both ballerinas were allegro dancers with undeniable star power, and on both, Balanchine mounted particularly stunning roles - the lead in "Allegro Brillante" for Ms. Tallchief... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/worth-their-carat-weight-in-karinskas-costumes/14178/ Fri, 20 May 2005 00:00:00 EST The trafficking in "Jewels," Balanchine's evening-length plotless ballet, is becoming increasingly competitive. Companies both large and small have mounted the showpiece, including Victoria Morgan's Cincinnati Ballet, Edward Villela's Miami City Ballet, and most recently, the Kirov. They bring their own emphasis to the work, cutting and faceting it to fit their training and skill. On Wednesday evening, the New York City Ballet performed its version to a sold-out house. The well-rehearsed... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/iconic-abstractions/14115/ Thu, 19 May 2005 00:00:00 EST On Tuesday evening the New York City Ballet explored its experimental side with Balanchine's "The Four Temperaments" and Christopher Wheeldon's "Polyphonia." Both dispense with many of ballet's conventional trappings (tutus, for instance, in favor of camisole leotards and muscular T-shirts). Unsheathed, the bodies of the dancers are like weapons in their sharp, angular combinations, but both choreographers wield them scrupulously to promote the classical virtues: a plumb line, balance, and... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/through-a-looking-glass/13861/ Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Balanchine once remarked, "We are a silent minority, we only dance." But Jerome Robbins looked for his inspiration in the non-dancing majority. He often reproduced onstage the ordinary movements that he had seen in the streets and in the studio, introducing a dance vernacular that was declaratively American: the open-palmed swagger of sailors on leave in "Fancy Free," the jazz-inflected skirmishes of urban youth in "West Side Story Suite." "Glass Pieces," performed Friday night at the New York... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/different-muses/13807/ Fri, 13 May 2005 00:00:00 EST The program Wednesday evening at the New York City Ballet let the audience eavesdrop on a drawing room conversation between Balanchine at his most classically polite in his early "Allegro Brillante," and Boris Eifman at his most temperamental in "Musagete," his homage to the maestro. "Allegro Brillante," set to a single movement of Tchaikovsky's unfinished Piano Concerto No. 3, is a joyous work for an ensemble of eight corps dancers and two principals, each dressed in the sherbet colors of... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/desert-mirages/13744/ Thu, 12 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Moses Pendleton, artistic director of MOMIX, wakes up each morning to a field of sunflowers. In the backyard of his Connecticut home, he cultivates them in well-ordered rows. Inside the barn where his company rehearses, he cultivates similar arrangements with human bodies: acute, geometric, and reverently imitative of the natural world. In "Opus Cactus," the evening length work that opened the company's run on Tuesday at the Joyce (the company is celebrating its 25th anniversary season), Mr... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/rare-revisions/13526/ Mon, 9 May 2005 00:00:00 EST A practical man, George Balanchine was not in the habit of revising his works. Had he set out to produce "masterpieces," he once asked rhetorically, "How would I ever finish it?" Yet he did revise some works, including "Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3" and "Harlequinade," both performed this weekend. They invite a peek into how his mind changed during his career. "Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3," performed Saturday, originally featured only the popular fourth section, known simply as "Themes and Variations... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/and-they-can-dance-too/13450/ Fri, 6 May 2005 00:00:00 EST For its Diamond Project series in 2002, the New York City Ballet commissioned works from contemporary choreographers, with the idea of setting each new creation on the company's finest dancers, like a diamond on an expensive engagement ring. For the most part, the series brought in artists from the outside; the styles ranged from Ulysses Dove's "Red Angels" to Susan Stroman's "Blossom Got Kissed," and the series sought to expand the repertory and perhaps even uncover a post-Balanchine jewel... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/all-that-jazz-so-much-more/13157/ Mon, 2 May 2005 00:00:00 EST Throughout his career, retiring principal Peter Boal has come to define the title role of "Apollo." Saturday evening marked his final performance in a work that was also a "turning point" in Balanchine's career as a choreographer. To a score by Stravinsky, "Apollo" depicts a nuptial between music and dance in the shape of Apollo and Terpsichore. Guest conductor Paul Mann guided the magnificent score, which conjures Apollo's mountaintop home of Olympus with an ethereal melody and rocky... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/complementary-language/13080/ Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Day turns into night in "Who Cares?," a blithe Gershwin suite that closed Wednesday's program of the New York City Ballet. The Broadway show tunes put a refreshing after-dinner drink in your hand at the end of two more soulful works on the bill, "Chichester Psalms" and "Barber Violin Concerto." A last-minute substitution also put "Tarantella" on the program. In Jo Mielziner's backdrop of a topsyturvy skyline, the office windows become stars in an evening sky. A corps of 10 dancers in blue... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/anthems-of-an-emigr/13011/ Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Two national dances heralded the spring season of the New York City Ballet on Tuesday. "Stars and Stripes" and "Union Jack," each created for a corps of more than 50 dancers, delivered a bombastic dose of patriotism that could only have sprung from the mind of an emigré. Their choreography speaks a Creole of clog-hopping brogue, poncey Briticisms, and American slang. Colorful banners may decorate the wings, giant flags may drop from the rafters, but these overtly commemorative works about our... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/starring-mark-morris-as-himself/12582/ Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Before the show begins, Mark Morris takes a bow. He appears from the wings, does an about-face, and struts toward the audience. At the corner of the stage, John Heginbotham stands at a table that is decorated in gaudy Christmas lights. Mr. Morris pours himself a stiff one. This is going to be a long night. Welcome to "From Old Seville," a demi-caractere set in a dark and queasy tavern in rural Spain. Mr. Morris plays himself, or rather your idea of him, with a spirit of self-mockery. He fools... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/birds-of-a-feather/12187/ Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST City Center was transformed into an aviary of athletic exoticism on Monday night. Only the plumage in the audience, couture gowns of organza and crepe-de-chin, rivaled the dancers on stage at this year's Dance for Medicine gala. David Parsons, artistic director and founder of the event, brought his own brand of fleet daring to the program, which consisted of modern works performed by topflight dancers from such companies as the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Martha Graham Dance... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/myth-mystery-in-grahams-america/12026/ Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Martha Graham was never especially interested in revivals of her earlier work. Yet an indication of the loyalty and dedication that exists within the Graham company are the tireless efforts undertaken to reconstruct these "lost" works. With archeological meticulousness, steps are pieced together from original contact sheets, the memories of longtime dancers, photographs, and film footage. Friday's program "C" included the company's most recent excavation, the 1943 work "Deaths and Entrances"... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/welcome-back-martha/11958/ Fri, 8 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Martha Graham's name is synonymous with modern dance. But she did not advance dance so much as take it back to its roots as the original theater - a theater capable of responding monumentally to events, even in a solo, in a manner very public and deeply personal at the same time. During her lifetime, Graham refined a visible language, a vernacular of formal economy and expressive power. Her signature oarblade hands and full-skirted accordion kicks seem to spring from an inner poetry. The Martha... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/dogmatic-metaphors/11871/ Thu, 7 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST The Brothers Grimm was not a sobriquet, but it could have been. Their fairy tales, along with Andersen's, were meant to instruct, but they also cast a decidedly sinister shadow. Robert Browning's poem "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," likewise, tells the story of a strange musician in a colorful get-up who uses his talent to rid a medieval village of bubonic rats: for a fee. The mayor stiffs him, and as a punishment he lulls the village children through a portal in the mountainside, gone forever... AERON KOPRIVA http://www.nysun.com/arts/beyond-the-music-video/11471/ Thu, 31 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST Pittsburgh marks the convergence of three historic rivers. Each has trafficked Americana since there was an America: everything from Heinz ketchup to the jazz tunes of Billy Strayhorn. The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's debut at the Joyce on Tuesday, "PBT Rocks," marked a similar convergence: three contemporary choreographers approached the pop sensibility of the company's program from different directions. The triple bill included music by such rock icons as Sting (Kevin O'Day's "Sting/ING...