All stories by Joan Acocella on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

A Rousing “Carousel” for Singers and Dancers by Joan Acocella

Joan Acocella reviews the Broadway revival of “Carousel,” at the Imperial Theatre, directed by Jack O’Brien and starring Renée Fleming, Jessie Mueller, Lindsay Mendez, Amar Ramasar, a…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 11:30AM
Friday, March 9, 2018

Happy Hundredth, Jerome Robbins by Joan Acocella

New York City Ballet and New York Theatre Ballet honor the choreographer’s centenary.

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 04:00AM
Friday, December 8, 2017

A Musical Tribute to the Victims of the Khmer Rouge by Joan Acocella

“Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia” remembers the killing fields and the culture of the country through film, music, movement, and poetry.

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 04:00AM
Saturday, March 25, 2017

Heaven’s Tomboy: A Rock Musical About Joan of Arc by Joan Acocella

For centuries, Joan of Arc has been used for political purposes, and that makes sense. Born in 1412, in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War, Joan saw her country overrun—fields scorched…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 09:02AM
Thursday, November 5, 2015

Agnes De Mille’s Artistic Justice by Joan Acocella

Of the choreographer Agnes de Mille it has been said that she was a better writer than she was a choreographer. That’s not the way she planned it. She made twenty-one ballets and the dance…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 05:02PM
Friday, October 30, 2015

Flatley Steps Down by Joan Acocella

Michael Flatley is retiring! This is terrible news. But you can see why he’d want to go home. He started Irish step dancing when he was eleven, as he was growing up on Chicago’s South Si…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 08:37AM
Monday, April 27, 2015

Mark Morris’s Dark Spring by Joan Acocella

Last month, as Mark Morris readied himself to bring the version of “The Rite of Spring” that he premièred in Berkeley in 2013 to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Times sent Marina Har…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:18PM
Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Soaring: Savion Glover in “Om” by Joan Acocella

Savion Glover is the greatest tap virtuoso of our time, perhaps of all time.

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 06:21PM
Friday, April 25, 2014

Joan Acocella: Justin Peck’s “Everywhere We Go,” at the New York City Ballet. by Joan Acocella

In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, all the greatest ballet choreographers of England and America died: George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, Jerome Robbins. Since then, ever…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Friday, March 28, 2014

Joan Acocella: A resurgence of ballet in opera. by Joan Acocella

On Friday, at the 92nd Street Y, Edward Henkel, the associate director of its Harkness Dance Center, will oversee a panel on the role of dance in opera—a tortured and exciting subject.…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Friday, January 24, 2014

Joan Acocella: Rennie Harris’s brilliant hip-hop choreography, at the Joyce. by Joan Acocella

Rennie Harris has said that he never really liked most of the work that he choreographed. That is a minority view. Harris, age fifty, is the most respected—and, to my knowledge, the mo…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Monday, January 14, 2013

Joan Acocella: Mikhail Baryshnikov and experimental Russian theatre. by Joan Acocella

Russia was ground zero of the revolution in theatre in the early twentieth century. Meyerhold, Tairov, Stanislavski, Nemirovich-Danchenko: they shot off rockets year after year. Under the U.…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Graham After Graham by Joan Acocella

At the turn of the century, both troupes faced the disaster that eventually comes to any modern dance company. The founder, the maker of the repertory, the creator of the technique, dies. Gr…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 02:18PM
Monday, October 8, 2012

Joan Acocella: Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo,” at American Ballet Theatre. by Joan Acocella

paragraph class="noindent">“If it is possible for a life to change at one given moment,” Agnes de Mille wrote, “then my hour struck at 9:40, October 16, 1942. Chewing gum, …

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Monday, January 9, 2012

Joan Acocella: Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and modern American dance. by Joan Acocella

Merce Cunningham, incontestably the grand master of modern dance—and the man by whom it was converted, belatedly, to modernism—died two and a half years ago, at the age of ninety…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Monday, January 2, 2012

Joan Acocella: “Snow White,” at the 303 Bond Street Theatre. by Joan Acocella

Austin McCormick, the director of Company XIV, says he takes his inspiration from the spectacles staged at the court of Louis XIV, but there may be some Aubrey Beardsley in there, too. The t…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Monday, November 28, 2011

Joan Acocella: “West Side Story” Fiftieth-Anniversary DVD. by Joan Acocella

paragraph class="noindent">The movie “West Side Story,” which turns fifty this year, is not primarily about Tony and Maria. It’s about the city and immigration and gang war…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Monday, November 7, 2011

Joan Acocella: American Ballet Theatre’s “Duets.” by Joan Acocella

When Mikhail Baryshnikov became the director of American Ballet Theatre, in 1980, one of his dearest hopes was to add modernist works, that rarity in his homeland, to the company’s rat…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM
Monday, September 26, 2011

Joan Acocella: Paul McCartney, “Ocean Kingdom,” and New York City Ballet. by Joan Acocella

New York City Ballet is running a deficit of about five million dollars, on an operating budget of sixty million, and, as young people brought up on YouTube and Facebook come to rely less on…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00AM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards