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New York City Center's 11th annual Fall for Dance Festival's program four reaches out to new audiences with a unique program. 

Can dance be captured on film in two-dimensional form? Can film fully represent live performance or should it only be used as a tool for documentation? Yet imagine the possibilities when choreographers bring live or pre-recorded film to the stage. Stephanie Sirabian discusses dance on film. 

FOCUS Dance returns to the Joyce Theater for a third seson; Yvonne Rainer and Urban Bush Women use art to ask tough questions of contemporary American society. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's mixed program showcases three beautiful works at New York City Center.

It can be said that New York offers arts enthusiasts an embarrassment of riches. It’s a veritable cultural Mecca.

Pilobolus’ program begins with a film short about their namesake, titled Pilobolus Is a Fungus. The playbill offers further education, explaining that the, arguably, repugnant spores are propelled with “extraordinary speed, accuracy and strength”. The message here is that these artists look for inspiration literally everywhere. Program A is a relentless testament to that mission.

Ask any ballet fan about American Ballet Theatre and you can expect to hear about a long list of principal dancers and starring roles. With company members from around the world, the conversation could take place in any language and span generations.

If using a descriptive word for the title of a show is bold, calling it Heavenly could be flat-out arrogant. But Introdans is an established company of superb dancers. They live up to the expectation with a program of three pieces around this lofty theme.While the Dutch company Introdans is celebrating their 40th anniversary, this year marks their first appearance in the United States.

From lifelong fans to the previously uninitiated, New York City Ballet’s All Robbins program was designed to make the whole house cheer. Jerome Robbins’ (1918–98) work on Broadway and in ballet made him a revered artist in both circles. Few others were ever able to achieve such crossover success.

To be explicit, Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía is explosive. But to describe this show as just a dance performance would be negligent. The absolute power radiating from City Center’s stage this week comes not only from the dancers, but the musicians and the music, from traditions carried on in caves across the south of Spain.

From Mozart to Dave Matthews, the Florida Everglades to the Joyce Theater, David Parsons, artistic director and co-founder of Parsons Dance, stated that his goal for Wednesday evening’s program was to create variety, to make sure it was all different. The opening piece, Wolfgang surprised long-time fans of the company with classical music and traditional ballet movement.

There are a number of clichés for weather, disasters, and showbusiness, but they rarely overlap. Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal were scheduled to open at the Joyce Theater on 30 October; instead, they joined the millions of people recovering from Hurricane Sandy that night. Just seven weeks later, New York had pieced itself back together and the company was finally able to take the stage.

Who was George Balanchine’s greatest muse? If her name is on the tip of your tongue, and you think that she must be a famous ballerina, think again. From their first collaboration in early in the 1920s, composer Igor Stravinsky inspired and challenged Balanchine with his music, starting in France and then expanding into different countries.

Imagine being trapped, for the rest of your life, in a swan’s body. Webbed feet, feathery wings, lakeside nest, the whole bit. Would you resign yourself to this “fowl” existence or refuse to accept your fate – no matter the consequences?Swan Lake is about one woman, Odette (danced by Veronika Part), in this fantastical situation.

Simply stated, watching the Limón Dance Company is an emotional experience. The concepts that inspired founder and choreographer José Limón 65 years ago remain fresh today and challenge the audience. This unspoken conversation is the hallmark of American modern dance and part of Limón’s legacy.

American Ballet Theater’s La Bayadère transports viewers to another world, not just back in time, but to a place that rarely exists outside one’s own imagination. This fantastic, limitless quality characterizes La Bayadère, from the sets to the costumes, the music, and of course the dancing.This three-act ballet is a classic love story of star-crossed lovers destined to break the audience’s heart.

This season New York City Ballet unveiled two entirely new ballets by choreographers Peter Martins and Benjamin Millepied. Both world premieres took place during the NYCB’s spring gala earlier this month and were reprised Tuesday night for an eager, if not as impressively dressed, audience.Martins’ Mes oiseaux (“My Birds”), first of the night, included some interesting choices.

When discussing visual arts, especially ballet, lines are frequently at the center of the conversation. Body lines, directional lines, a line of thinking, the possibilities are endless. Or, in Alonzo King’s poetic words, lines are “the visible organization of what we see.” This point of view permeates King’s choreography in a stellar performance by Alonzo King LINES Ballet company.

From the traditional choreography to exploring new ideas, Spain’s only classical ballet company presented a diverse program at the New York City Center. The relatively new company was founded in 2008 by former American Ballet Theater principal Ángel Corella and originally called Corella Ballet.

Art is often used to tell a story, and an image or a score can transport its audience to another time and place. At the Joyce, Ballet Hispanico tells the story of Latino dance and its roots across continents and oceans.Program A opens with Nube Blanco (White Cloud), Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s choreography to music by María Dolores Pradera.

This week, DanceBrazil mixed culture and art to bring the spirit of Brazil to life at the Joyce Theater, New York. More specifically, the show celebrated Bahia, the Brazilian state known for capoeira and samba, and the birthplace of many of the company’s dancers.

“I wanted to chart a graph of the heart – to reveal the inner landscape.”– Martha Graham.The iconic dancer and choreographer’s words are a theme throughout Inner Landscape. All the works presented have strong characterization, no matter how abstract, and focus on the internal feelings of each protagonist.

How do you explain genius? The Eifman Ballet uses dance to bring this concept to life through the story of the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin.Artistic Director and choreographer Boris Eifman explains his inspiration in a note about the production: “To turn a moment frozen in stone into an irrepressible sensuous stream of body movements.

The Kings of the Dance program offers audiences a unique experience: a chance to see the top men in ballet letting it all out on one stage. This year, Opus 3 maintained the program’s reputation at New York City Center.

Watching MOMIX’s Botanica is like travelling to another world—one where the lines between reality and illusion are blurred. The dancers and their costumes create a performance that must be recognized as the sum of its parts. In this way, Botanica uses the organic quality of dance for a completely unique representation of nature.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater opened its 2011 season, Robert Battle’s first as Artistic Director, at New York City Center. But while the company has a loyal following, with this strong support comes astronomically high expectations. Thursday night the Ailey company more than earned that respect.Battle is the third person in the company’s history to be named Artistic Director.

For many, Peter Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker signals the start of the holiday season. The famous score, festive setting, and winter backdrop are the perfect combination for an annual tradition. Ballet companies across the world present this family favorite, and this year New York City Ballet brings George Balanchine’s original choreography to life.

Explosive, bold, and vivid: these are the words that came to mind watching the extraordinary dancers of the Complexions Contemporary Ballet Company. An apt description for the company that set out to redefine dance and embrace its multicultural influences.

Famed New York City Ballet principal Suzanne Farrell lit up a New York stage once again Wednesday evening, this time with her company’s Joyce Theater debut. Ms. Farrell’s unique relationship with choreographer George Balanchine and beautiful artistry as a dancer made her a legend in the dance world; from this legacy The Suzanne Farrell Ballet was founded.

In the mid-1960s, a visit to renowned French jewelers Van Cleef and Arpels inspired George Balanchine to choreograph a glittering ballet. New York City Ballet premiered Jewels in April of 1967 at the New York State Theater (now called the David H. Koch Theater) and it remains a fan favorite 44 years later, delighting audiences from that same stage.

For all their classical roots and tradition, the Mariinsky Ballet opened their week at the Metropolitan Opera House with an innovative performance of Anna Karenina. Artistic director Maestro Valery Gergiev blended a number of unique elements to bring Leo Tolstoy’s epic to life, including his own conducting of Rodion Shchedrin’s modern score.First, consider the Mariinsky Ballet’s long history.

If you’re a regular theatergoer you may notice a discreet sign in the lobby when you show your ticket at the door. A slip of paper inserted in your program catches your eye, “In this evening’s performance of Giselle, the role of...” Your heart sinks: an understudy.No one wants to hear that a cast member in any production is unable to perform, especially not when it’s due to injury.