Ballet Arizona's "Play" -- a preview of my review

The waiting period between a performance and the publication of a review of that performance can be an unbearable stretch, particuarly if the publication in question is a traditional monthly magazine. Newspapers at least can get a review on their pages overnight (if they choose to do so!), and the Internet can do it instantaneously. But monthly magazines? Let me put it this way: I saw Ib Andersen's extraordinary new full-length ballet, Play, in early June in Phoenix. I filed a review of it to Dance Magazine on June 12. And in about 10 days from today (Aug. 20), you'll finally be able to pick up a copy of Dance Magazine's September issue and read it. It will not run on the magazine's website, but here's a teaser:

"On a black stage sparkled with points of light, an ensemble engages classical vocabulary, starting with the simplest of school steps and moving on to intricate, athletic combinations for ten solo dancers: Kenna Draxton, Kanako Imayoshi, Natalia Magnicaballi, Michelle Mahowald, Christina Noakes, Joseph Cavanaugh, Ross Clarke, Robert Dekkers, Ilir Shtylla and Astrit Zejnati. Everyone finds the air in some way peculiar to them; the men in bravura jumps, the women in elegant and unforced pointe work. As Mozart’s music transforms into meditation, the dancing morphs unexpectedly into two gymnastic turns: A man held aloft by two other men in splits position, and a woman in an unsupported headstand in reverse splits. Masculine and feminine, bonded in heavenly classical language, have divided – split – into two directions: Man being lifted upward, woman headed into the earth."

Read the rest in the September Dance Magazine.

- KLF