Author Archives: Effie Mihopoulos

When Deborah Hay choreographs a dance, she has trillions of collaborators: every living cell in her body. Years ago she set herself a unique disciplinary system of what she calls “cellular consciousness,” isolating herself all day, every day, in her studio, training herself to listen to her body’s messages on how to move. The resulting […]

With each new dance, Nana Shineflug reinvents herself–or at least reveals a new facet of her personality. She has bounced back from a lot: divorce, alcoholism, childhood rape, her studio burning down twice in ten years. Still dancing at 58, Shineflug knows the everyday victory of just getting through the next dance class, let alone […]

It’s a theatrical truism that firelight onstage is effective, whether it’s a candle, a candelabra, or a lit cigarette in the dark: natural burning light magnifies the presence of the performer who holds it. So imagine two dozen dancers holding lit candles as they march from the back of an auditorium down to the stage, […]

Maggie Kast has been choreographing dances as striking as her long, prematurely white hair for 30 years. But after all this time she’s still remarkable for her childlike sense of wonder, and the way she transfers this quality to her movements. Her work is also intriguing in its degree of variety; she packs her whole […]

The women stamp a hard-edged beat into the floor with their feet and use their arms and hands to make circles over their heads and against their chests as if they are scooping the music in toward themselves for inspiration. The men stand ramrod straight, moving their hands in quick, full-body circles that always end […]

Syncopated rhythmic line dances, intricate tangles of footwork, high-flash leaps and turns, swoops and slides, dapper elegance: tap dancers know how to grab your attention. A few years ago downtown commuters would sometimes find a tap dancer in tails–complete with top hat and cane–on the subway platform, his dress and energetic dancing contrasting with the […]

Old-timers reminisce fondly about the vaudeville circuit years when you could go to a show and see Anna Pavlova dance The Dying Swan followed by a dancing-elephant act. Nowadays we have to turn to imports for this wild mixture of theatrics and sensationalism. The Chinese Golden Dragon Acrobats, from Taiwan, provide a delectable variety with […]

Flamenco dancer Manolo Rivera rivets your attention to his feet. He’s a marvel of clarity and, whether he slows the speed to the soft pat of a toe or heel and the merest whisper of a sound or speeds it up to a bullet-fast ricochet of steps, each flicker of movement clearly makes an individual […]