Debra Cash
Like the Dance Exchange’s staged and site-specific productions, Liz Lerman’s “Hiking the Horizontal” is pieced like a quilt. Like Liz, it’s a little rumpled and gives the reader a lot of permission to go her own way.
Black Swan isn’t about surpassing ordinary limits. It’s a film about a masochist seen through the eyes of a sadist. The film could be a textbook demonstration of what academics refer to as the male gaze—with a pretty young thing poked and dismembered under a misogynist lens. By Debra Cash Darren Aronofsky has said that…
Ultimately, Basil Twist’s Petrushka is a meditation on the tension between the animate and inanimate, a story that lets a puppet explain what it’s like to be a puppet, a fable that argues that to be alive is to recognize causality and suffering—and that the ability to suffer is paradoxically a precious gift. Basil Twist’s…
Screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on October 2nd, the Bolshoi’s Bolt is a curiosity worth exploring, a meditation on the Russian past that could only be produced after the nightfall of Stalinism. After all, in some eyes composer Dimitri Shostakovich may have been a stooge, but he was never an obtuse one. Reviewed by…
What is a Judicial Review? It is a fresh approach to creating a conversational, critical space about the arts. The aim is to combine editorial integrity with the community—making power of interactivity. This is our second session. Hear Ye! Hear Ye! For dance critic Debra Cash, Serenade/The Proposition, the first of Bill T. Jones’s investigations…
In Serenade/The Proposition, the first of Bill T. Jones’ investigations into the myth and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the choreographer looks at history and history looks back. By Debra Cash Cash was the professional critic on the Judicial Review panel reacting to Bill T. Jones’ Serenade/The Proposition at Jacob’s Pillow, July 21 through 25. She…
Karole Armitage, once known as a “punk ballerina,” brings her dance troupe to the Berkshires. By Debra Cash Where has dancer Karole Armitage gone? Is “gone” a verb or adjective? Why has she put an exclamation mark smack in the middle of her new company’s name? The articulate choreographer with A-list artist friends, sweethearts and…
The time is right for the revival of ballet about a country mouse who becomes a Parisian courtesan. The Royal Ballet’s production of “Manon,” presented by the Bank of America Celebrity Series and the Wang Center for the Performing Arts. By Debra Cash We’re living in a gilded age when everything and everyone seems to…
By Debra Cash From the hype, you’d think that ten years ago British choreographer/director Matthew Bourne was the first person to develop a post-Freudian “Swan Lake” or cross-dress a ballet production, and you’d be wrong. You’d be right, however, to call Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake” a phenomenon. In 1996-97 the work became the longest running…
A Mark Morris world premiere is turning the attention of the national press to the state of the Boston Ballet Company under new director Mikko Nissinen. By Debra Cash Choreographer Mark Morris once said something to the effect that after George Balanchine died, people started to believe that every work Balanchine had ever choreographed was…
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