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ADF: A Thrilling Premiere by LeeSaar The Company in Reynolds
LeeSaar The Company dancers in Grass and Jackals. Photo: Christopher Duggan. The American Dance Festival presented another world premiere of a work it had commissioned on June 30, when LeeSar The...
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Uh, haven’t I seen a lot of this before? Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company...
Hazard warnings: Too-loud sound; strobe lighting; way-much theatrical smoke; boredom. I know, the boredom is really unexpected. If you’ve seen Brenda Angiel Aerial Dance Company at the American Dance...
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Hot Dance–But I don’t wanna TALK about it! Camille A. Brown and Dancers at...
Camille A. Brown (front right) & Dancers in Mr. TOL E. RAncE. Photo: Christoper Duggan. A really interesting troupe is at the American Dance Festival this week, with a program that repeats again...
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Let Us Now Praise Terpsichore: Paul Taylor Company Returns to ADF
It’s been a tough week in Durham, depressing and humiliating, what with the sneaking Legislature, the obfuscating Governor, the precipitating weather and The New York Times editorial on the decline of...
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Prancing in The Showroom with ponydance: ADF @ Motorco
ponydance in the grappling stage of their How Did It All Go Right? At Motorco, 7/17/13. Photo: Grant Halverson, courtesy ADF. Comedy dance theater is a rare thing. Possibly it is unique to the Irish...
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Components Inseparable: Beautiful Trisha Brown Dance Program at ADF
I go to so much performance because it feeds the ravening aesthetic beast in me that is rarely satiated. Yet occasionally there’s a night at the theater like an orchestrated feast, refined and...
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Footprints: 3 New Commissions as ADF 2013 Begins Its Final Week
From Adele Myers’ The Dancing Room. Photo: Grant Halverson. Make Believe by Rosie Herrera, The Dancing Room by Adele Myers, and Gates, by Vanessa Voskuil, all commissioned by the American Dance...
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Moonglow and Fireworks: ADF’s 80th Season Closes Tonight
At the beginning, it seems so luxuriously long. But each year on the final weekend, the American Dance Festival season feels painfully short. The ADF’s 80th season–its 35th in Durham–ends tonight at...
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Gaspard & Dancers Give Powerful Concert at Duke; repeats October 19
Gaspard Louis, the Haitian-born dancer and choreographer who settled in Durham in 2009, presented his first Gaspard & Dancers annual concert that year. It was successful in a mild sort of...
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ADF: One Duet, One Dastardly Duo
The American Dance Festival has presented two small-scale programs this season away from its main series venues of Reynolds Theater and the Durham Performing Arts Center. The first, which I had thought...
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ADF: Adele Myers and Dancers’ Happy Physics
Adele Myers Dancers near the end of Myers’ Einstein’s Happiest Thought, in Reynolds Theater, June 30, 2014. Photo: Grant Halverson, ©ADF. Adele Myers and Dancers, who opened their 3-day run in...
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ADF: A Dark Night with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
Crystal Pite’s Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue, performed by Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. Photo: Sharen Bradford. Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet will return to the Durham Performing Arts Center...
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ADF: Ballet Preljocaj
Ballet Preljocaj. Photo:©JC Carbonne. The Durham production features other dancers. The seriously wonderful French company Ballet Preljocaj takes the stage again tonight as the American Dance...
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ADF: Double-Down Day at the Festival
Each year towards the end of the summer performance season of the American Dance Festival, some of the teaching faculty at the ADF School present a concert of their own works. Some of them dance;...
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ADF: Tere O’Connor Dance, part 1
From Sister. Tere O’Connor Dance’s Cynthia Oliver and David Thomson in the venerable Ark on Duke’s East Campus, July 13, 2014. Photo: Grant Halverson, ©ADF. I had my introduction to the work of...
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ADF: Tere O’Connor, part 2
The dances are studded with moments that seem like drawings on the stage. This is one from poem, July 15, 2014, Reynolds Theater. Photo: Grant Halverson, ©ADF. Tere O’Connor Dance presented two...
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ADF: Paul Taylor: Dance Until You Drop
The Paul Taylor Dance Company in Marathon Cadenzas. Photo: Paul B. Goode. Leaving the annual American Dance Festival presentation of the Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Durham Performing Arts Center...
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ADF: Four Choreographers Dance ON THEIR BODIES
Ronald K. Brown. Photo courtesy of ADF. An artist stands alone before the blank page. A choreographer stands alone on a blank stage. Any mark is possible. The infinitude of choice paralyzes. But the...
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ADF: Footprints–follow those tracks–and then th-th-that’s all, folks, until 2015
Leonie McDonagh takes her dancers over the top in her Footprints dance. Photo: Brian Farrell. The well-programmed 2014 American Dance Festival performance season comes to a close this weekend with...
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Gaspard & Dancers Deeply Impressive in 5th Annual Concert
Gaspard Louis achieved a critical plateau last week on his trek up the mountain towards success for his modern dance company, Gaspard & Dancers. The company presented its 5th annual concert in Duke...
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