An old-fashioned black-draped dressing mirror is the only prop in the moody, elemental, but by no means elementary “Fuego Flamenco XVI: Intimo,” presented by GALA Hispanic Theatre. The mirror’s undraping and re-draping bracket the hour-long dance-theater piece by two superb dancers and four accomplished, passionate musicians. The overall emotional sense of the work is one […]
About Alexander C. Kafka
Dance Review: Alvin Ailey’s old and new revelations
Technically, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s evening at the Kennedy Center Opera House Tuesday was a performance. But following a pre-concert gala, with an audience in sparkling gowns and tuxes and loosened up by flutes of champagne, it felt more like a love affair. The DMV hearts Ailey in a big way. And for good […]
Dance review: The National Ballet of Canada Offers a Contemporary Choreographic Bouquet
The National Ballet of Canada presented an exotic bouquet of contemporary choreography Tuesday by William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, and Alexei Ratmansky. The works, all but one performed to music from a live orchestra conducted by music director David Briskin, displayed a superbly prepared company brimming with energy and artistic ambition. The opener, Forsythe’s “The Vertiginous […]
Review: Bourne’s New Adventures: ‘Swan Lake’ still shocks with its transgressive beauty
It seems like just yesterday that Matthew Bourne’s groundbreaking reinterpretation of a classic triggered gents to walk out at the sight of two men partnered and young girls to cry when confronted with a narrative so different from the storybook tutued tale they had anticipated. A quarter-century later, his radical take still shocks, but less […]
Review of Cats movie. When it comes to magic, starry cast can’t compete with ballerina Francesca Hayward
A brilliant musical can only be cheapened by a surfeit of screen effects and novelty casting. But Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats is a mediocre musical, brilliantly packaged, and it benefits nicely from those cinematic bonuses. A diverting if bizarre family entertainment, it should have a respectable Christmas opening with a, um, long tail. Early trailers […]
Review: Come From Away at the Kennedy Center. Much needed catharsis
The husband and wife team Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s sole theater credit a decade ago was a Toronto Fringe Festival breakout called My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding. Before that, they lived in New York, where Sankoff took acting classes and performed and Hein worked in a recording studio. Reading their resumes then, one […]
Review: The Illusionists: Magic of the Holidays. An uneven but fun night at The National
Alakazam! See a middle-aged man regress to a bug-eyed, slack-jawed 10-year-old while watching eight magicians! So it was Tuesday night as the Illusionists brought their latest production to the National Theatre for a “Magic of the Holidays” show that runs through Sunday. But while the moderately entertaining, family-geared evening helmed by director and creative producer […]
Dance review: Mark Morris’s Beatles tribute ‘Pepperland’ lacks an emotional core
The deconstruction of a cultural touchstone by an acclaimed choreographer is an appealing notion, all the more so to live music. But although it was superbly performed Wednesday night, Mark Morris’s 2017 Pepperland, riffing off the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, feels conceptually slapdash. As brilliant and original as Morris is, that’s not […]
Review: Amadeus soars at Folger Theatre
There were, at various points, half a dozen versions of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus floating around. The playwright was trying to square the circle and make his metaphorical work about the tragic view of sublimity from the world of mediocrity better fit the record of musicological history. He never did. He never could. He didn’t need […]
Review: Dhana and the Rosebuds, an intriguing but unsuccessful drama on the plight of Syrian refugees
In theory, Dhana and the Rosebuds, a theater-dance hybrid about a Syrian emigree seeking her refugee grandmother, should be compelling. It is topical. Its wedding of abstract and ritualized movement, set, and prop design with an ever-so-current story is bold. It has two lead characters we reflexively sympathize with and root for. And its conscientious, […]
Review: Escape to Margaritaville, a predictable buffet of Buffett, amiable and ambling
How shocked must Jimmy Buffett have been when “Margaritaville,” his ode to heartbreak and mid-grade alcoholism, became not just a breakout 1977 hit but a potent lifestyle brand? It’s about wasting away, not chillaxing, yet his parrothead followers apparently longed to be that lonely flip-flopped loser on the beach. Or did they? Maybe what they […]
Review: Merce Cunningham at 100. The choreographer’s pioneering spirit lives on
Eleven dancers in white unitards with horizontal black strips at the top extending to gloved hands. In a dawn of pastel light, they hold a marvelous stillness. Four musicians play a minimalist John Cage score with a fragile, simple, ever-so-slow piano line and occasional extended single-high-pitch violin notes over the cascading micro-percussive tumbles of a […]
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