Email Author Deborah Jowitt

1999 Stories by Deborah Jowitt

• Down New Roads

  published June 8, 1999

  What is How! Do! We! Do! all about? Jessye Norman sings and Bill T. Jones dances. Not exactly. It's about a great singer and a great dancer... More >>

• Downtown Memories

  published June 1, 1999

  A trim, sixtyish man in a suit walks in circles, pauses in profile for long moments, removes his jacket, shirt, and pants— freezing now and... More >>

• Drama on Pointe

  published May 25, 1999

  Outside the Met, where American Ballet Theatre's annual season of block busters runs through June 19, food-service workers seeking to unionize... More >>

• Beyond Normal

  published May 18, 1999

  Bebe Miller's Going to the Wall lasts almost an hour. And I can imagine an edited version. Yet, like life, this dance has to work itself... More >>

• A Surfeit of Swans

  published May 11, 1999

  It's a miracle that the dowager Swan Lake has survived so many face-lifts since her debut in 1877. The old girl has great bones:... More >>

• Funky Nights

  published May 4, 1999

  The camera closes in on Sandman Sims's rueful face; nowadays, he says, young black men aren't interested in tapping. The year was 1978, in the... More >>

• Bringing War Home

  published April 27, 1999

  Yoshiko Chuma's working life is an international conspiracy. Many of her grants and commissions involve cultural exchange; she depends on the... More >>

• Missionaries Dancing for Democracy

  published April 27, 1999

  In 1965, as Congress battled over whether the country needed an arts endowment, two congressmen reportedly pranced down the corridors, arms around... More >>

• All Grown Up

  published April 20, 1999

  Damn! The kids in Eliot Feld's Ballet Tech do look smart this season. In fact, it's time to stop thinking of them as kids just because they come... More >>

• Moving Men

  published April 13, 1999

  A few years ago, Tere O'Connor made dances in which irritable, off-kilter dancing pocked with curious gestures conveyed all he wanted to say,... More >>

• Depths of Memory

  published April 6, 1999

  You may think you know a composition for cello quite well. Then you hear Yo-Yo Ma play it. Its colorations become richer, more nuanced. Images... More >>

• Of Marvels

  published March 30, 1999

  For years, choreographer Erick Hawkins and composer Lucia Dlugoszewski explored each other's minds and serene yet breath-caught sensibilities. His... More >>

• Text on the Loose

  published March 23, 1999

  In Big Dance Theater's production of Mac Wellman's playlet Girl Gone, evil is a misty thing with sharp little teeth. Three schoolgirls,... More >>

• Raw to Cooked

  published March 16, 1999

  I remember there was music. But the sounds that ring in my head after a performance of Alfred in the Courtyard: The Hanging Man are not,... More >>

• Taylorama

  published March 9, 1999

  Shuffles and twists and wriggles and jumps are no longer to be used in connection with dancing," wrote Vernon Castle in his 1914 manual, Modern... More >>

• Gender Games

  published March 2, 1999

  The way some people talk about flamenco, you'd think it was all about sex; the dancers seem to size one another up for conquest, to taunt the... More >>

• A Master's Legacy

  published February 23, 1999

  It's no secret that Jerome Robbins was hard on dancers. To understand that he also loved them very much, you have only to watch the New York City... More >>

• Apply Polish Sparingly

  published February 16, 1999

  A matriarch dies, and an incomparable collection of silver and china passes to her devoted heirs. Some pieces are kept in exquisite order. Others... More >>

• How Many Stories?

  published February 9, 1999

  Peter Martins's new Walton Cello Concerto, for the New York City Ballet, transpires in a big chill space. With the mottled gray backdrop,... More >>

• Powerglut

  published February 2, 1999

  Wally Cardona opens Dance Theater Workshop's Carnival Series (through May 23) performing an excerpt from José Limón's The... More >>

• Oh Brothers!

  published January 26, 1999

  You probably haven't read The Brothers Karamazov recently. Never mind. Odds are it wouldn't help you fathom Boris Eifman's ballet The... More >>

• The Colors in Gray

  published January 19, 1999

  Hail January! The New York City Ballet packs away its Nutcracker and gets on with the business of celebrating its 50th anniversary. The... More >>

• Pleasure Principles

  published January 12, 1999

  When I walk into a theater to see an event billed as dance, I'm prepared to find performers talking a blue streak or singing or potting daisies or... More >>

• Don’t Let Go

  published January 5, 1999

  To be a parent is to squelch your what-ifs before you go nuts. "What if he drowns?" "What if a stranger drags her into a car?" Susan Marshall's... More >>

• Read All About It!

  published January 5, 1999

  The dance boom of the '70s sparked more than proliferating companies, public interest in the art, and better pay for dancers. Even in the lean,... More >>