Tourist Guide

Falling for… Dance?

I’ve always had a lot of appreciation for dancers and choreography. Seeing how it feels as though I have two left legs, I’m always amazed by how well some people are able to dance. When I heard that we’d have the opportunity to attend Fall for Dance, I was pretty excited from the get go. I walked into the theatre with high expectations for an incredible show.

Fall for Dance began with the Three Movements piece, arguably my favorite piece of the night. I tend to watch a lot of hiphop choreography videos, and the Three Movements piece was very similar to many of the hip hop videos I had seen. This piece did an excellent job syncing the music with the performer’s movements and made it entertaining to watch. The woman’s voice was also interesting, although I wasn’t too fond of her voice, I thought it was interesting that ballet was able to mix so many elements of dance and performance into one piece.

The next piece was the Red Angels piece. I remember watching this in class and being really surprised at how well defined the ballet dancers were. However, in the actual show, the electric violin caught my attention first. It was the first time I had heard an electric violin live, and it was pretty interesting to listen to. However, as the piece went on, I began to notice the dancer’s bodies more and more. I was astonished that they had such muscle definition from dancing, and it made me think about just how much work they must put into practicing for these dances to have such a well defined body. Although the performance wasn’t as entertaining as the Three Movements piece, the Red Angels piece still made for interesting lighting, interesting effects, and an enjoyable mirror performance.

Duet, the third piece of the night, completely lost my interest. The piece was so random and it didn’t really make any sense to me. I didn’t find it interesting in the slightest, and it put  me to sleep pretty quickly so I don’t have much to say about this piece.

The final piece, ID:ENTIDADES was completely phenomenal. There were multiple performances going on at the same time. Although it wasn’t as organized as the Three Movements piece, it still managed to be clear and entertaining to me, as opposed to the Duet piece. The dancers had graceful movements, and I found the break dancing to be incredibly entertaining to watch. Having had watched so many hip hop videos, I found it really enjoyable to finally be able to see dancers performing windmills and flares in person.

Ballet isn’t quite what I thought it would be, but it’s a good kind of different. I always thought ballet had to be slow, graceful, boring dancing, but the Fall for Dance completely changed my previously ignorant view on ballet.

Two phenomenal New York City Ballet dancers! Photo taken by Paul Kolnik. View more of his photos here: http://www.paulkolnik.com/index.html