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Dance Preview: Madison Ballet's "Push" Program
Quirk and Johnson in Diana and Acteon © SKepecs 2017by Susan KepecsMadison Ballet’s season opener, Push (at the Bartell, Oct. 20-21), may be the most diverse repertory program the company’s ever done....
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Dance Review: Madison Ballet's Push Repertory Program
Diana and Actaeon © Kat Stiennon 2017by Susan KepecsI saw Madison Ballet’s first repertory show of the season, Push, at the Bartell on October 20. The program featured three neoclassical pieces by...
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Madison Ballet's 2017 Nutcracker Marks Smith's Retirement
Annika Reikersdorfer (Sugarplum Fairy) © Kat Stiennon 2017by Susan KepecsMadison Ballet artistic director W. Earle Smith is retiring at the end of the 2017-18 season, and the company’s current...
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The Year that Was in the Performing Arts
by Susan KepecsYikes, 2017. We lost Fats Domino. Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone in week six. The once-great University of Wisconsin can now expel students for protesting, and the Board of Regents...
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SHE comes to the Bartell
Kaleigh Schock and Damien Johnson rehearse "Mingus Dances" in the studio © SKepecs 2018by Susan KepecsThe headlines, on any given day, reveal an unprecedented wave of women standing up to male...
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Momix to Make the Desert Bloom at Overture Hall
Sonoran Gila monster in Opus Cactus Momix press photoMomix. Mo-dern dance, mix-ed with balletic pointework, gymnastics, sleights of lighting, and circus-y tricks. I call it dance-tainment, but...
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Laurie Anderson Uses Language to Look Through Time at the Wisconsin Union...
press photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Union TheaterLast time I wrote about Laurie Anderson, in 2008 (when she did a show she called “Homeland,” at Overture Hall), my piece ran in Isthmus, and my editor...
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She: Sassy and Smart
Les Noces © Kat Stiennon 2018by Susan KepecsMadison Ballet’s repertory program of works by women choreographers, SHE, at the Bartell...
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American in Paris, in Madison
Maddox (Jerry) and Walsh (Lise) photo by Matthew Murphy 2017The 2015 Broadway musical American in Paris, directed and choreographed by balletworld superstar Christopher Wheeldon, won a slew of awards...
View ArticleCécile McLorin Salvant to Swing at Shannon Hall
by Susan KepecsI’m not as good at keeping up these days as I used to be. One late Tuesday afternoon last summer while waiting for Ben Sidran to crank up the groove for the second set of his weekly...
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Dance Preview: Jessica Lang Dance at Shannon Hall
Jessica Lang Dance performing The Calling (excerpt from Splendid Isolation II). Dancer K. Kimura. Photo by Sharon BradfordIf you read The New York Times’ Arts section or the frontmatter in The New...
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Rise and Demise: Madison Ballet's Last Rep, for Now
Shea Johnson rehearses Valse Fantasie © SKepecs 2018by Susan KepecsYou can see Madison Ballet’s final repertory show, Rise, at Overture’s Capitol Theater on March 30-31. “Rise” is a bit of a misnomer,...
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Until the Last Curtain Falls
Quirk and Massey, Mina variation © Kat Stiennon 2018by Susan KepecsMadison Ballet – and let me clarify that I’m talking about the company of professional dancers on season contract, not the School of...
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Dance Theater of Harlem Comes to Overture Hall
Company photo by Rachel NevilleDance Theater of Harlem, the venerable ballet company founded in the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by former New York City Ballet...
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Free Jazz Missionaries, Part II (2018)
Mosely (back L), Nusbaum, Moran (back center), Moss, Baker SKepecs © 2018One of the big deals on the city’s bustling start-of-summer agenda last weekend was the three-day Madison Reunion –...
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Is it Ballet, or is it Flamenco?
by Susan KepecsOne night a couple of years ago I chanced across a jaw-dropping video on Canal Once, out of Mexico City. Seven men, dancing brilliantly. I kept asking myself – is this ballet, or is it...
View ArticleAsere's Story
Asere started out as a bit of a mystery. Not the word, an unmistakable cubanísmo of West African origin with fluid meaning but generally glossed as bro, dude, amigo, right-hand man. I mean Asere: The...
View ArticlePedrito Martínez: Twenty-First Century Rumbero
Pedrito Martínez is the new face of an old Cuban tradition. His guarapachangueo – an open, heavily improvisational, polyrhythmic rumba that evolved from guaguancó, one of three twentieth-century rumba...
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A Conversation with Victor Wooten
The last time we saw legendary bass player Victor Wooten in Madison it was March, 2012, on Bela Fleck and the Original Flecktones’ knock-it-outta-the-park farewell tour show at the Wisconsin Union...
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A Conversation with Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director of Ballet Hispánico
Línea Recta © Paula Lobo, courtesy Ballet HispánicoBallet Hispánico, that venerable and resilient Big Apple cultural institution, has spent nearly half a century empowering diversity in a country...
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¡Viva México! Mariachi Herencia comes to the Capitol Theater
photo courtesy of Mariachi Herencia“Sin mariachi no hay fiesta,” they say in Mexico – without mariachis, it’s not a party. Happily, the big fiesta that...
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Maestro and Chanteuse -- Sandoval and Monheit return to Madison next week
Because Madison still isn’t a real city, the legendary trumpet player Arturo Sandoval hasn’t played here since his pre-New Year’s Eve show at Overture Hall in 2007. He returns, to the Wisconsin Union...
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It's Finally Here -- Pilobolus's Shadowland: The New Adventure
© Beowolf SheehaI’ve been waiting since February 23, 2017 – the day I saw Pilobolus’s Shadowlandat the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Shannon...
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Sweet Honey: Healing for Troubled Times
Howard T. Cash photo, courtesy of SHIR website Sweet Honey in the Rock is honest and true in a vanishing universe of honest and true things. Last seen in Madison at...
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A New Album with Madison Roots to Check Out
Rost and Agner practicing to record Violet Cusp, Lori Citro photoLast week a new album landed in my lap. It’s by Madison pianist Nancy Rost and Washington, D.C. – based bass...
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