Open Air Concert

Lilla Cabot Perry (American, 1848-1933) - Open Air Concert, 1890 (Oil on canvas. MFA, Boston) - - Perry frequently used her three daughters as models: Margaret (born 1876) shown here playing the violin, Alice (born 1884), and Edith (born 1880). Combining her academic training with Impressionism, Perry modeled the figures solidly but dissolved the forms of the landscape behind the girls and suggested the dappled sunlight on Margaret’s blue dress with broad strokes of white and pink pigment…

 

Alexei Ratmansky's 'Symphony #9

Sarah Van Patten and Luke Ingham in Ratmansky’s Symphony #9 from Shostakovich Trilogy, San Francisco Ballet, April 2015. - Vanessa Zahorian and James Sofranko gleefully led their sporty fellow villagers in folksy dances, while Sarah Van Patten and Luke Ingham’s adagio suggested the dread that underlay the smug Soviet façade; Hansuke Yamamoto wandered among them with pliant jumps and turns…
 

Dance

Rashaun Mitchell - Light Years (New York,  April 2015) -  - The dance had a pleasingly interplanetary feel, as if it were taking place outside of time and gravity’s pull. Within this unfamiliar landscape, the four dancers engaged in curious behavior, launching into loping runs and dives and slithering glides. They seemed half-animal, half-extraterrestrial, at times relating to each other, at others orbiting off into their own worlds…