By Martha Ullman West
According to Jennifer Homans, whose Apollo’s Angels the New York Times Book Review has anointed one of the 10 best books of 2010, ballet is dead, not only because Balanchine is dead, but also because the courts of Louis XIV, XV and XVI are long gone.
That conclusion is [...]
By Bob Hicks
Maryhill Museum of Art officially breaks ground at 3:30 p.m. next Friday, Feb. 18, on its $10 million expansion project, which will give the Columbia Gorge landmark some much-needed elbow room. Between an expansive plaza and expanded indoor spaces, the project will add 25,500 square feet. The museum will be open during construction: [...]
By Martha Ullman West
At Mississippi Pizza a week ago last Friday, I saw one of the most musical dance performances I’ve seen in years, delivered with all her heart by a dancer named Sadie (last name unknown), age about five, as she was propelled to her feet by the equally heartfelt music [...]
By Martha Ullman West
For Mary Oslund, the child’s sense of infinite possibilities has never ended. How else could she have made Childhood Star, her stunningly beautiful new piece, in which she seamlessly mixes every form of movement that has touched her life as a dancer and choreographer?
Commissioned by White Bird, for which we owe [...]
When Hollywood decides to depict a specific trade, dramatic license usually trumps veracity. Think all those cop movies truly depict an average day in the life and thinking of a policeman? How about the hilarious world of newspaper hacks in the likes of The Front Page? Black Swan, the new horror film with a ballet [...]
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief correspondent, shares some modern and classical moments with dancer/choreographer Rachel Tess and rediscovers that the distance between old and new is often whisker-thin.
By Martha Ullman West
I took thoroughly modern choreographer Rachel Tess to the opening matinee of Balanchine’s The Nutcracker with me on opening day last Saturday, the day [...]
The place to be in Portland Tuesday night was the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, where the legendary Martha Graham Dance Company was performing in town for the first time since 2004. As if that weren’t draw enough, the program provided the world premiere of Portland choreographer Josie Moseley’s “Inherit,” a solo for Graham dancer Samuel [...]
By Bob Hicks
Scatterers have been sowing their wild oats elsewhere lately, and old topics are coming up new again. A quick update:
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief correspondent, has a guest column on Tobi Tobias’s Seeing Things dance blog at Arts Journal. In Doing Well in a Rainy Climate: Ballet in the Pacific Northwest, Martha [...]
Martha Ullman West, Art Scatter’s chief correspondent, spent Thursday night at White Bird, watching Lucinda Childs‘ minimalist landmark “Dance.” (It repeats Friday and Saturday nights at Portland’s Newmark Theatre.) For Martha, who also reviewed the American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Thursday’s show was a felicitous rediscovery.
By Martha Ullman West
Thirty-one years ago, dear [...]
Delores Pander “was made of stern stuff, but laughter and a zest for life itself were so much a part of her it’s hard to believe, or accept, that she’s gone,” Martha Ullman West wrote in this recent tribute.
Friends and admirers of Pander, who died June 24 at age 71, are invited to [...]