360 Dance
360 Dance
Ted Shawn’s Dream: Redux
By Philip SzporerNow, in its eighty-forth season, the ten-week festival is home to artists performing on the various stages, including an impressive outdoor venue named Inside/Out. The School at Jacob’s Pillow brings faculty and students from the ballet, contemporary and dance theatre streams of dance, and this year change was in the air.
Posted August 17, 2016
360 Dance
Border Crossings
By Philip SzporerIn late April, I was an invited guest at the Northwest Network of Dance Festivals. The network brings together five major international dance festivals, located in three different states of the northwest region of Mexico: Sonora, Sinaloa and Baja California. Over a period of two weeks, I presented a talk on the development of Canadian video-dance entitled “Northern Exposures.”
Posted May 26, 2016
360 Dance
A Moving Sound Amidst the Hedgerow: Choeur Maha at the Reford Gardens
By Philip SzporerSound artist, composer, and choral conductor Kathy Kennedy envisions is an eighteenth-century court dance, evoking the symmetrical sense of the garden, and using those structures compositionally for the Incantata floralis.
Posted June 1, 2015360 Dance
Breaking Out
By Philip SzporerIn the spectacularly popular gaming arena, dance has been marginalized due to its seemingly limited commercial viability, but that is changing.
Posted April 9, 2015360 Dance
Sia, Shia, and Maddie: The Elastic Heart
By Philip SzporerThe new year has started off with a bang, courtesy of the Australian singer-songwriter Sia and her latest music video, Elastic Heart. The video features a warring dance by actor-turned-performance artist Shia LaBeouf and the phenomenal dance sensation Maddie Ziegler, best known for her appearance on the competition reality series Dance Moms.
Posted January 27, 2015
360 Dance
Reflections on 2014
By Philip SzporerWhat follows is a consideration of work that I saw in 2014, listed in no particular order. It is also a message of gratitude to those creators who unfailingly push forward, break boundaries, develop their vision and create worlds in which we, as audiences, can be inspired and challenged.
Posted January 5, 2015
360 Dance
CINARS: Convergence and Discovery
By Philip SzporerThe biennial CINARS (Conférence internationale des arts de la scène) is an intense meeting of minds and a don’t-miss event of magnitude. Numbers speak for themselves: this year, for its sixteenth edition, over 1500 participants (presenters, producers, agents, artists) from across the country and around the world converged on Montréal for what many consider one of the most stimulating and inspiring performing arts markets around, a place in which they could build their business.
Posted December 5, 2014
360 Dance
Dancing Through Words with Wendy Perron
By Philip SzporerTo promote her new book Through the Eyes of a Dancer, Wendy Perron, the noted American choreographer, dancer, writer and editor, participated in a lively and wide-ranging conversation with colleague Maura Keefe for Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s PillowTalks.
Posted September 30, 2014
360 Dance
Dancing the Rite of Spring Today: Bodies, Particles, Technologies and Affects
By Philip SzporerThe way in which dance can exist at the intersection of art and technology can be directly linked to the early work of Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers and many of their confreres. In Canada, the Montréal-based husband and wife team of filmmaker Denis Poulin and choreographer Martine Époque have been radically recomposing and altering human movement, creating a body of performance that can only exist in virtual form.
Posted September 5, 2014
360 Dance
A Tangled Obsession
By Philip SzporerPhilip Szporer discusses A Good Madness – The Dance of Rachel Browne, a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Danielle Sturk.
Posted July 10, 2014
360 Dance
Transcending Cultures
By Philip SzporerEmerging from a complex political history in the twentieth century, the spirit of Czech independence comes to fruition in the contemporary performing arts community in Prague.
Posted June 19, 2014
360 Dance
The Wonder of Motion
By Philip SzporerIf you’re an adventurous internaute and love the act of online discovery, the announcement that the New York Public Library (NYPL) has digitized over a thousand hours of dance videos marks a thrilling moment in time.
Posted May 13, 2014
360 Dance
Living Breathing Dance
By Philip SzporerIt’s rare that a dance artist means so much to so many people. Margie Gillis is that exception.
Posted March 25, 2014
360 Dance
Team Spirit
By Philip SzporerFor the last week, I, along with billions of people around the world, have been following the pageant of the Olympic Winter Games.
Posted February 21, 2014
360 Dance
Banging on the Ceiling
By Philip SzporerDance’s increasingly precarious ecology is creating a scary time for young choreographers, especially those with great expectations.
Posted January 27, 2014
360 Dance
2013 Round-up
By Philip SzporerOur online regional editor in Montréal shares his favourite dance performances in 2013.
Posted December 16, 2013
360 Dance
On Criticism
By Philip SzporerChoreographers have been unburdening their anger at dance critics on social media, taking them to task for negative reviews and registering disdain for the scribes’ perceived lack of insight. Our Montréal regional online editor Philip Szporer weighs in.
Posted November 23, 2013
360 Dance
Charting Cultural Values
By Philip SzporerOver the last few weeks, Québec has been rocked by the introduction of a proposed Charter of Québec Values – it’s a divisive and heated re-evaluation of the social fabric.
Posted October 8, 2013
360 Dance
New Edifice Complex
By Philip SzporerIt’s positive news that Espace Danse Québec, the performing arts space planned for the heart of Montréal’s Quartier des spectacles, will be up and running by the summer of 2015.
Posted September 5, 2013
360 Dance
Home and Away
By Philip SzporerIn the first of regular monthly columns, Philip Szporer muses on watching dance at home in Montréal and away at Jacob’s Pillow.
Posted August 7, 2013
