ByGD
Seattle Dance Collective continues its second season with the third of five pieces, A Headlamp or Two by Beth Terwilleger. On July 16, this unusual dance premiered, like the rest of them, online. But although every piece in the program so far has made good use of location and format to create something different from you would see on a regular season stage, A Headlamp or Two felt like film first and dance second. Which, considering how rarely those two art forms play well together, was lovely.
ByGD
“You never take me to the modern ballets,” my 8-year-old complained. “I only get to go to the story ballets.” Was she right? Conventional wisdom tells us to introduce kids to ballet through story, but I’ve never really bought it. After all, little kids are far more likely to spontaneously erupt into abstract dance than adults are, so why would they have a harder time understanding it? But as a reviewer, I do tend to take the kid closest to the age that readers are likely to want to bring, so maybe my artistic younger daughter had been unfairly sequestered in the story ballet ghetto? Fortunately, Pacific Northwest Ballet came to rescue with Her Story, a mixed rep of contemporary ballet choreographed by three of the world’s leading choreographers. The title implied a feminist theme, but the only link between the three pieces is that the choreographers are all women, and all three pieces are magnificent. Read More