But while the sixth annual incarnation is perhaps disappointingly short on out-of-town talent compared to years past, newMoves remains unique in the region as a showcase for both local and visiting artists performing new contemporary dance. Continue reading Pittsburgh’s newMoves Contemporary Dance Festival returns for a sixth year
“[The choreography] is really like a puzzle. It’s very mathematical and complicated.” Continue reading Amanda Tarr & Company make Pittsburgh debut in ‘Retail’
By Steve Sucato The members of Havana’s Malpaso Dance Company were still decades from being born when, 54 years ago, the U.S. enacted a trade embargo with Cuba. But the effects of that embargo have overshadowed their lives and the lives of other Cuban artists ever since. But while the two nations, separated by 90 miles of water, have been politically at odds for more … Continue reading Cuban troupe Malpaso makes its Pittsburgh debut
By Steve Sucato Beyond simply entertaining audiences, concert dance is an important means of self-expression for its creators and performers. Some artists employ dance as a forum to air their thoughts and feelings on issues important to them. In Loving Black, Oct. 17 at The Alloy Studios, local dancer and choreographer Anthony Williams uses dance to advance his own views on the complicated attitudes surrounding … Continue reading A new dance work explores love and friendship between African-American men
By Steve Sucato Moroccan-based dancer/choreographer Hind Benali’s new work, Identity, began as a solo journey of self-discovery after the deaths of her two grandmothers in the same year. Both were of Algerian decent, and both lived with her. “All the traditional parts of my identity came from them,” Benali said recently by telephone from Washington, D.C., where the company was performing the work. “The question then … Continue reading Moroccan choreographer Hind Benali takes a journey of self-discovery in ‘Identity’
By Steve Sucato Predation is a theme that movement artist Mark Conway Thompson says he has been returning to in his works since 2007. “That has a lot to do with what I think is wrong with the world today,” says Thompson. The domestic-violence case of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice is just one example now in the headlines. Such episodes, along with … Continue reading Predation, victimization, art and rebirth in Mark Conway Thompson’s ‘Kimono’
By Steve Sucato How do mental illness, poverty and addiction relate? That is the question choreographer Marjani Forte explores in being Here … /this time. It’s her reworking of being Here, which she premiered last year to critical acclaim at New York City’s Dancespace Project. Forte and company follow their week-long residency at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater’s Alloy Studios with a work-in-progress showing of the newly … Continue reading New York-based choreographer Marjani Forte offers a work about recovery
By Steve Sucato This summer, the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater continues serving as one of the region’s leading incubators of new dance work and artist development with three installments of its East Liberty LIVE! series. Up first, former Dance Alloy dancer André Koslowski returns to Pittsburgh to further develop his Wiegenlied (“Lullaby“), an evening-length dance-theater piece exploring themes of loneliness and isolation. Koslowski and his Pennsylvania Dance Theatre showed … Continue reading Pittsburgh work-in-progress showing to mark Pennsylvania Dance Theatre’s transition to TanzTheater André Koslowski
By Steve Sucato The fleeting nature of interpersonal relations is the theme of dancer and choreographer Alexandra Bodnarchuk’s latest production, CONNOTATIONS: unknown. The 45-minute modern-dance work will be performed May 2 and May 4 at PearlArts Studios. Bodnarchuk, 24, is a Pittsburgh native who graduated from Ohio University in 2012 with degrees in dance and French. A new dancemaker on the local scene, Bodnarchuk says she … Continue reading Pittsburgh’s Alexandra Bodnarchuk debuts her new work ‘CONNOTATIONS: unknown’
By Steve Sucato The rights of the LGBT community have been in the news, with state courts and legislatures extending or denying those rights to residents. But no matter where you fall on such issues, the human desire for love remains a universal truth which binds us all. That is the subject of choreographer Sean Dorsey’s 2014 Isadora Duncan Dance Award-winning work The Secret History of Love, … Continue reading A nationally touring dance work was inspired by stories collected by the LGBT Elders Oral History Project
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