October Selects

Now that fall is fully underway, we’re following up movement-packed summers with more work on the consulting and production side of things. Take a moment to enjoy and be inspired by the dance discoveries that have been fueling our brainstorms, conversations, thoughts, feelings, and travels lately.

LARA’S SELECTS

• Gerard & Kelly at the Festival d’Automne à Paris. The California-based performance artists presented a new work titled “Modern Living” at Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, with choreography that temporarily revives the brief affair between the architect and American dancer, Josephine Baker.
• The latest Paris Review cover story. Meanwhile, photographer Sayuri Ichida has been documenting ballerina Mayu Oguri since 2017. By striking a sense of dissonance between dancer, posture, and setting, Ichida hopes “to convey some part of the jarring experiences we independently shared as immigrants” from Japan to New York City, by way of Europe.
• This first dance (scroll to watch). Last month, I went to the Bronx Museum of the Arts to celebrate the wedding of Michael F. McBride and Samuel Lee Roberts, who met each other ten years ago on their first day of work as dancers in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. After Sam planned a surprise flash-mob proposal that was covered by Dance Magazine, it was no surprise that their first dance as husband and husband included a choreographed step or two…not to mention, a pretty impressive lift.

CANDICE’S SELECTS

• The podcast, In Other Words. Editor and host Charlotte Burns of Art Agency, Partners, seems to be asking all the pertinent questions about the art market. Recent episodes have had me thinking a lot about representation and context in both fine and commercial art.
• Childish Gambino and his Playmoji. In that realm of appreciating not appropriating, I am drawn back to Google Pixel’s ads. By using choreographer Sherrie Silver—who is adept at fusing traditional African dances with contemporary movement in a way that skirts generalization and cliche—Google Pixel got more than just compelling moves for Donald Glover to play with in AR. They ended up with several spots, some starring Silver herself, that tell a layered and culturally rich story of how technology can enhance culture.
• Emerging choreographer Claudia Schreier. A couple weeks ago, Atlanta Ballet premiered a new work that was a perfect storm of driving rhythms, modernist design, and humanist aspirations. Schreier’s neoclassical ballet movement was a kind of architecture in motion, leading many aficionados to wonder if they had ever seen those ballet steps before. (They had.) But her ability to surprise with virtuosic partnering and, at the same time, make a simple step cinematic and new, foreshadows exciting commercial possibilities.