Deception. Duplicity. Danger. By the end of Bale Folclorico da Bahia’s show at the Orpheum Theatre Friday night, you will have experienced all that, and probably danced along with it. Lest the raucous rhythms and superb athletics of the dancers make you forget, Brazilian dance disciplines like capoeira and maculele…
Zap. Zowie. Zut Alors! That’s what you might have been saying if you visited Scottsdale Center for the Arts on October 25 when Actionheroes hurtled into town on its own high-octane power. It’s a new show by Elizabeth Streb and her eight-member dance company, Ringside. The group has been called…
Improbably, given the geography and the general cultural malaise of the Valley, a grand finale of world-class quality closes National Dance Week here. Since the week began on April 21, presenters from Tempe to central Phoenix offered audiences dance by leading American choreographers — Sean Curran, Moses Pendleton and Kevin…
Dance lovers with eclectic appetites can gorge on three very different dance performances in the Valley this weekend. The tops in jazz dance, ballet and the Brazilian martial arts/dance form Capoeira could all be on your plate. River North Dance Company takes its name from a tony Chicago neighborhood bordering…
The doyenne of dance theater, Pina Bausch, first came to the Valley during a 1996 tour of Nur Du (Only You) with her Tanztheater Wuppertal. During that same tour, Newsweek called Bausch the world’s most influential, and most controversial, choreographer. Indeed, she’s been provoking imitators and gasps ever since she…
Born in East Africa during World War II to German missionary parents, Manfred Fischbeck became something of a missionary himself — a dance missionary. For 30 years, the dancer, choreographer and musician has headed Group Motion Dance Company in Philadelphia. He’s brought the good word about his dance style and…
Like marching bands, the Ice Capades, the Rockettes, and Oz’s Munchkins, Riverdance has stolen the hearts of Americans. Perhaps the canny Irish feel the pulse of American taste. They know we prefer fake food and paintings by numbers, and when we win the lottery, we’re heading not for the Holy…
Early in this century, Russia’s western borders rippled like a ribbon in the wind. Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed–you could wake up on the wrong side of the border! Young men who found themselves on the Russian side were conscripted into the Army, only…
You knew Olympia Dukakis was an Oscar- and Obie-winning actor. You saw her in Moonstruck and Steel Magnolias and in many other films. So what’s she doing acting as creative consultant to a San Francisco dance troupe that’s making a new work here in Phoenix? No scripts in the offing?…
In the opening image of a documentary video, Meryl Tankard dances sinuously, sweatily, whipping her hair in front of the camera. “Dance really should be the ultimate form of expression,” she says when she finally catches her breath. “I wanted to act, to paint, to design. But then I thought,…
For nine years Michael Cole starred as one of Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s dancers. Now he’s starring on stage and screen. Computer screen that is. The tall, gorgeous, dreadlocked dancer/choreographer could easily star on the silver screen too. Cole dances his work Command X/V, Versions 1, 2, and 3 during…
Anyone who’s seen choreographer David Rousseve’s dances broadcast on PBS or live in Arizona in the past several years knows he likes to populate the stage like it’s a small town. As he did in Urban Scenes/Creole Dreams at Gammage in 1994 and, more recently, in Dry Each Other’s Tears…
The family values Arizonans seem to know best are the ones that say: Slash social-service budgets and smash programs that provide aid to kids and battered women. This being Domestic Violence Awareness Month, several Arizona choreographer/performers apparently decided to score a few defensive whacks for the family with some chillingly…
German choreographer Pina Bausch came to our own Arizona desert several times looking for material for her latest work, Nur Du, whose Arizona premiere is Thursday night at Gammage Auditorium in Tempe. Translated into German from the 1955 Platters hit “Only You,” the title song, one of 34 blues, pop…
