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Welcome to Eye on the Arts. Articles are presented by Celia Ipiotis, Director of Eye On Dance And the Arts. Your comments are welcomed.



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NYC BALLET: EPISODES February 10, 2020 Historic works rarely revived at NYC Ballet both puzzled and delighted audiences. Last performed in 1993, George Balanchine’s charming Haieff Divertimento (premiered 1947) showcases the company’s new class of ace dancers. In a combination of classical ballet and a jazzy, modern dance vocabulary the ballet features one lead couple, the engaging Unity Phelan and Harrison Ball along with 4 supporting couples. Musically, it flows in a five-part piece that flexes its danceable American music roots—at times referencing Balanchine’s  Square Dance . If  Haieff Divertimento  resembles bubbly wine, then the 1959  Episodes  equals a dry martini—hold the olives. An early experiment meant to bring together two giants of dance world, Balanchine and Martha Graham, Episodes was broken into two parts, separated by one intermission, united through Anton von Webern’s music, and the exchange of a couple of dancers. At the time, Taylor was a member of the
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CHE MALAMBO February 14, 2020 Che Malambo captured the Joyce Theatre’s audience from the moment the cast of 12 dancers appeared through the dark stage against a bright backlight with a crescendo of zapateo - Argentinean rhythmic footwork - culminating in a roaring shout. Choreographed and staged with rampant showbiz and savoir-faire, Gilles Brinas catered an array of traditional Argentinean dances set in an austere contemporary framework. For the entire performance, the dancers wore a single outfit compose of neutral black sleeveless shirts, plain black pants and Malambo boots. The evening started with a variation of the widely known Malambo Norteño, characterized by its brisk zapateo characterized by fast shuffles, hip twists, inverted leg whips, kicks, heel scuffs, toe accents, all embellished by its steady elegantly proud stance. A vibrant feast of bombo legueros followed with the cast showcasing their drumming mastery. Commendable was the soloist that introduced Malambo sureñ
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Ayodele Casel and Arturo O'Farrill

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September 27, 2019 Many artists, particularly of the solo variety, project, to varying degrees of subtlety, the will to stand out. Ayodele Casel very tangibly doesn’t. Instead, she educates us of the rich lineage of female tappers of color, at which she is currently the forefront. This generosity is not the sort with which one embarks on a career, however; it comes from an active, humbling realization along the way that one is never alone. “There was only ever room for one,” Casel explains within her recent collaboration with Latin jazz ambassador Arturo O’Farrill, to tell how she journeyed from her Ginger Rogers-obsessed teens through NYU’s drama department to becoming a sultan of tap dance. At tap jams, she discovered a connection between the conversational side of tap with the communicative capabilities of African drumming, and began researching and reaching out to tappers who were not only female, but looked like her, too, whose legacies may have been overlooked, lost to tim
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