Email Author Deborah Jowitt

2000 Stories by Deborah Jowitt

• Communities Centered

  published December 26, 2000

  Risa Jaroslow choreographs as if the most important thing in the world were how and why someone takes another's hand or leans into another's... More >>

• The Other Virtuosity

  published December 19, 2000

  During Alvin Ailey's later years, he seemed torn between showing off the virtuosity of his tremendous company and fostering human drama. As the... More >>

• Peeling Down to the Core

  published December 12, 2000

  In the small, empty rooms of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Doug Varone's dancers swoop about like bats, rocketing off the peeling walls,... More >>

• Groaning Board/Lean Cuisine

  published November 28, 2000

  "You gotta have a gimmick," sing the three strippers in Gypsy. Big dance companies have learned this lesson. These days, a fundraising gala... More >>

• Keeping It Up

  published November 21, 2000

  Master juggler Michael Moschen (at the Joyce through Sunday) makes keeping three balls in the air look like something you could do while planning... More >>

• Merce’s Major Events

  published November 14, 2000

  For scholars of Merce Cunningham and former Cunningham dancers, seeing one of the company's Events is like browsing through a family album.... More >>

• World Beats

  published November 7, 2000

  It's a mystery how ballet companies decide which works to program. During American Ballet Theatre's annual fall season at City Center, which ended... More >>

• Dancing on Unsteady Ground

  published October 31, 2000

  When Ralph Lemon set out to make his proposed trilogy Geography, he was prepared to let go of his identity as a postmodern New York... More >>

• Plunging Toward Apocalypse

  published October 24, 2000

  During the 1970s, a few bold choreographers changed the way we looked at dance. Why wait for a climax when it's clearly not in the cards? In... More >>

• Opening the Cage

  published October 17, 2000

  If you want to dance in Montreal, you'd better not bruise easily. For years, audiences have been gasping and wincing as members of companies like... More >>

• Catching the Music’s Waves

  published October 10, 2000

  Ever since Twyla Tharp dissolved her company in 1988, she's been forming—and dropping—groups. She must enjoy the contrast between making... More >>

• Toss Me the Crown, Sweetie

  published October 3, 2000

  Every English schoolchild knows how Edward II met his end: a red-hot poker up the bum. This would not, on the face of it, seem an ideal... More >>

• Shoot for the Stars

  published September 26, 2000

  Free dance on late-summer evenings! At the "Evening Stars" series sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the World Trade Center,... More >>

• The Master and His Disciples

  published September 19, 2000

  New Yorkers get regular feasts of horse's-mouth Balanchine from New York City Ballet, the company he founded. The Kennedy Center's ingenious... More >>

• Homeboy Shakespeare

  published September 12, 2000

  A man creeps through a field of recumbent bodies. Did I say man? More an ape with the instincts and long velvet muscles of a tiger. He stops to... More >>

• Redefining Innovation

  published September 5, 2000

  Once, people knew what constituted an avant-garde in the arts, and when they had one. It was Saint-Simon who, in the 1820s, first envisioned... More >>

• Digging Up Meaning

  published August 8, 2000

  In Sophocles' Antigone, the heroine fatefully disobeys her dictator-uncle by burying her brother's corpse, which has been dishonored and... More >>

• Diabolical Angels

  published August 1, 2000

  Where would Paul Taylor be without his fix of darkness, even evil? I suspect choreography would become a chore to him, and that his "beautiful"... More >>

• Speaking Many Tongues

  published July 25, 2000

  In flamenco dance, solitude becomes incendiary. Singers hover over a dancer, inciting her with hoarse cries. Guitarists respond to her rhythmic... More >>

• No Church Picnic

  published July 18, 2000

  Most of us tap modestly into our body's resources. We slide from upright to seated to prone, lug stuff, balance on one leg to get the other into... More >>

• Hunting New Classics

  published July 11, 2000

  Lobbing intermission venom or cybertomatoes at New York City Ballet's Diamond Project is a good game. How many useful works, we grouse, have... More >>

• Performing Struggle

  published July 4, 2000

  When Kei Takei performs, it is as if a tree walked. Her every step seems wrenched from the earth, achieved at great cost. Until I saw her new solo... More >>

• Sinners, Idols, Angels

  published June 27, 2000

  Wild girls storm Performance Mix at the Joyce Soho. Jennifer Allen wears a short, tight dress and frowzy red wig. Sharp, glowering moves.... More >>

• Mix It Up

  published June 20, 2000

  The postmodern world often overreaches itself dreaming up new mixtures, and ends up with, say, artichoke ice cream. Christopher Caines tries a... More >>

• Polishing Up History

  published June 13, 2000

  Who could have imagined that Mikhail Baryshnikov would become the archivist of modern dance, as well as a sponsor of new, cutting-edge... More >>