by Jacquelyn Thayer “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” was the quote that kept intruding upon me, quietly but insistently, while watching the debut of the Joffrey Ballet’s made-for-digital Boléro, a 16-minute piece choreographed by company artist Yoshihisa Arai and starring Anais Bueno, set to Maurice Ravel’s infamously repetitive composition. Not to…
by Jacquelyn Thayer Figure skating is a distinctive breed of Olympic sport, where subjective preference is in regular conflict with objective measurement. This shapes its perception among viewers — read any fan discussion to see how even a skater’s technical scores can easily become a topic of heated debate — but just as much its…
Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the most demonstrably versatile team in ice dance history, have also just laid claim to the title of most decorated skating team in Olympic history — a tally of two gold medals in the individual ice dance event and team event in PyeongChang brought their total across three Olympic…
Top eight week on So You Think You Can Dance finally brought the long-awaited pairing of contestants, providing dancers with just a little better opportunity to showcase strengths. It’s refreshing, in a sea of routines sometimes overburdened by a detailed narrative, to get a dance with one simple purpose: movement. Choreographer Mandy Moore is good…
Last week’s So You Think You Can Dance recap singled out Gaby Diaz’s tap routine with finalists Lex Ishimoto and Evan DeBenedetto. And while official pick Ishimoto is appearing here as a contemporary-first dancer, his training in tap has been substantial enough for the two to offer up this Fred-and-Ginger referencing routine from the usually…
Back to the highlights as So You Think You Can Dance‘s second-to-last “Academy” round, whittling the All-Star teams down to two candidates apiece, before the top 10 reveal in weeks to come, brought back a bit more in the way of dance routines. While we’re sorry not to have seen, for example, Fik-Shun’s efforts with…
Moving in Measure can never pass up a chance to post any clip of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and the 106th anniversary of Ms. Rogers’ birth is certainly as good an excuse as any. While uptempo numbers like Swing Time‘s “Pick Yourself Up” are great demonstrations of technical ability and connection in the purest…
We’re still on a tango kick (so to speak) so for this week’s Watch, enjoy this 2015 backstage performance of “La Cumparsita” from Flavia Cacace and Vincent Simone: I have a strong affection for performance executed outside of the official trappings — rehearsal footage and demos in practice wardrobe, away from the eyes of a…
We’ve reached the Semi-Finals, where votes cast now contribute to next week’s ultimate outcome. While there’s a probable frontrunner, dances from couples across the board stood out in this week’s Trio Night. 1. Laurie Hernandez, Val Chmerkovskiy and Maks Chmerkovskiy, Samba You can argue that this approach to a trio dance doesn’t quite meet the…
Eras Night is one of my preferred Dancing With the Stars theme nights when done to its best — reasonable tributes to a period or a style, less so when involving odd mash-ups or blatant inaccuracies. Last night’s offered its own mixed bag, but on the whole presented a fairly enjoyable line-up — even if…
