Tag Archives: Fall for Dance

Dancing with the Stars

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I am not a dancer. I cannot dance, never been to any dance concerts, never had an interest in dance, definitely cannot critique dance.

Going to the Fall For Dance event at the City Center was probably the first time going to a dance event. Not going to lie, I didn’t want to go. I thought it was going to be pretty boring and well I guess I had the same attitude I did for the opera.

There is a first time for everything, and I guess my judgement has been wrong. I actually thought the first dance was pretty messy, as I had responded in Joshua’s post. I felt like I couldn’t follow everyone.

The second dance, the ballet, made me want to fall asleep. I’m sorry if that got anyone mad, but I guess I just didn’t really like ballet and that.

But wait.

It gets better.

Post intermission was when everything went wild. Absolutely loved Sebastian Ramirez and Honji Wang’s performance. I was totally not expecting that. It was actually a little ambiguous at first, the performance was so good between the two. A few of us even got to take pictures with the stars of the performance after the show (Check Chloe’s post out!).

The last performance was even more unexpected. It went from one man just doing his dance moves, to a group of people dancing with the guy at the end not conforming. I guess they were trying to get the point across, conformity is not always the case, the best (Could that be why the first one i felt was messy?) The best part was when they started to pull people up to dance in the front, and we all thought that the girl in the plaid shirt was our very own Sam! 🙂

In any case, the night turned out to be great and after pictures with Ramirez and Wang, it was Halal Guys! Like Erica said, go to the iconic 53rd and 6th, “it is all part of the New York experience!”

 

~Christopher Chong

Fall for Dance was great

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I enjoyed watching the dancing in Fall for Dance at New York City Center.

The first performance was terrific because all the dancers’ movements corresponded with another and everyone took their turns dancing. During the dance all of them came very close to one another without making any contact, which impressed me. However, the music was bland because it sounded like the same key being played on an organ with a little bit of others occasionally coming in and simple the sequence just repeated. The ballet performances that followed were not very interesting to me other than their manipulation of gravity. The dancers were ready to fall when their partners stopped them just in time. That is not for me. I would probably fall over. Later, two dancers were quite funny when they danced because the man physically showed impulses to come closer to his partner. In the end a person that looked like he worked for City Center stood in front of the curtain, and did some funny dance moves for the audience. I thought he was just fooling around, but later it seems that it was all part of the dance. I found this to be a very unique trick on the audience. After the dance built up in intensity, the dancers took people from the audience onto the stage and dance with them full of energy. It was very entertaining to watch trained, lively dancers dance with unprepared audience members. I wish I could have been chosen to dance with them.

I was so happy we went to this performance.

Fall For Dance

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I should start this by admitting that I know very little about dance, especially what makes professional dance good. I also went into this event expecting to dislike the majority of the performances, and “Concerto” did little to dispel these expectations. I found Lucinda Childs’s “Concerto” to be overly repetitive, as both the music and the dance seemed to loop. Fortunately, the rest of the performances were very entertaining. “Neue Suite” by Semperoper Ballett Dresden was a great performance because each segment was slightly different. The segments seemed to work from more classical ballet to more modern ballet, as both the dance and the music progressed. “AP15” by Sebastien Ramirez and Honji Wang was an outstanding display of chemistry. Both Ramirez and Wang were so in sync and were able to express a story through their dance. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre’s “Minus 16” was the most interesting performance because it was not a conventional dance. I felt this performance was designed entirely to convey a deeper message. While the other performances likely tried to convey messages of their own, they seemed more focused on sticking to a more conventional dance style. I would have to say my favorite performance on the night was “Neue Suite” because each segment was slightly different from the one before and each one took an incredible amount of skill.

Anthony Cacchione

Fall For Dance

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I have been waiting to write this post because I absolutely love dance and believe that it is one of the greatest forms of expression of emotions. It is one of my passions! I apologize because this will probably be a lengthy blog post.

I am ever thankful to Professor Drabik for giving Nabila and me Orchestra seats because they were absolutely wonderful. Because we were so close to the stage, we could experience the action happening on the stage. We could feel the dancers’ energy and the emotions that they portrayed with their performance. It was absolutely wonderful! I genuinely wish that our entire class could have had such incredible seats and I am sure that this way we all would have enjoyed the dancing even more.

I found a very interesting review from The New York Times about Fall for Dance by Alastair Macaulay (ironically). However, I do not necessarily agree with the author.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/arts/lucinda-childs-and-alvin-ailey-troupe-at-fall-for-dance.html

Lucinda Childs’s “Concerto” did not impress the author of the article at all and I many spectators disliked this piece as well. In contrast, I really enjoyed this dance because it reminds me of Merce Cunningham, a pioneer of contemporary dance. In the very precise dance sequence, the dancers had upright posture and there were moments of stillness. The dancers wore black attire in order to emphasize the movements of the body. Moreover, the females’ hair was pulled back to make it seem as if there was no difference between the male and female dancers. This further emphasized the bodies of the dancers. Overall, I believe that this was an inspiring performance due to its minimalism. It was a wonderful introduction to the other performances.

Dresden’s Semperoper Ballet did not interest the New York Times’ journalist as well. “Nueu Suite” was actually my favorite performance this evening. Macaulay described it as being “inexpressive,” though this performance was everything but inexpressive. The modern ballet was amazing with all the jumps, footwork and lunges. The performers were wonderful. In addition, I thought that each performance portrayed a different mood and feeling. The first performance had a romantic aura, the dancers in red were passionate, and the dancers in purple seemed to be bickering through their dance and movements. The final performance drew a connection between old-school ballet and contemporary dance. This was certainly an astounding performance that I really enjoyed. I believe that the New York Times’ journalist overlooked this performance.

Sebastien Ramirez and Hanji Wang were fantastic as well. I admire how Ramirez and Wang made their performance seem very casual and natural. They awe-struck the entire audience with their very modern, “circusy” (as Alastair Macaulay calls it) performance.

Ailvin Ailey’s Dance crew made an impressive statement as well. This performance was a favorite this night. The performance combined humor, dance and strong messages. In my opinion, the dancers were making a political and a social statement in two of the performances. In the performance involving the audience, apparently one of the women is an American ballerina that will present her performance later this week and others may have been professional dancers as well. I admired this performance; yet, I believe that perhaps the choreographer tried to combine too many things into one performance.

Finally, I just want to mention that I noticed that all the dancers that danced this evening had a fundamental ballet education. I find this very interesting because contemporary dance tends to distance itself from ballet in order to emphasize other movements.

Anyway, what do you guys think about this article? What you agree/disagree with?

Thank You Professor Drabik for taking us to see this wonderful performance!

photo 3

City Center is beautiful!

 

Angelika