Dance

The paintings of Claude Monet are the inspiration behind Compañia Chuscales y Mina Fajardo’s new production “Monet’s Moon,” which is presented September 28-30 at Teatro Paraguas.

“I was little when I saw first Monet’s work in Japan,” explains the show’s choreographer and dancer Mina Fajardo, who was born and grew up in Japan and feels a special connection with Monet’s paintings. “There is so much Japanese influence in his work. Monet even made a Japanese garden with water lilies at his home.”

Fajardo, along with the show’s assistant director and dancer Monze Diaz, has created a dance production that pays homage to the great impressionist painter. [Read More…]

New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht is back in town with Stars of American Ballet, a chamber-sized group of dancers that tours nationally and internationally during ballet companies’ off-seasons.

Presented by Performance Santa Fe on August 3 and 4 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, this summer’s Stars of American Ballet performances feature works choreographed by a few of the company’s dancers.

Creating work for the show are Ask La Cour, a former member of the Royal Danish Ballet and current member of the New York City Ballet; Danielle Diniz, a graduate of Cornell University who was part of the national tour of the show “Dirty Dancing;” and Denys Drozdyuk, a native of Ukraine who studied at the Juilliard School in New York and is a three-time World Ballroom Dance Champion. [Read More…]

The New York-based ensemble Pilobolus recreates the feeling of being outdoors in its 2017 work “Branches,” which is included in the dance company’s program presented by Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on July 24.

“The piece is a dialogue about and with nature,” explains Pilobolus’s co-artistic director Matt Kent, who choreographed the work with the company’s other co-artistic director, Renée Jaworski. “Renée and I took seven dancers out for a long hike in our area to feel the wind on their faces and do what really became a walking meditation. We wanted our dancers to experience the outdoors before the creation of movements that communicate the feeling of nature.”

“Branches” was commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2017 and premiered at the festival last summer. [Read More…]