The Mayo Performing Arts Center (MPAC) stage transformed into a ballroom for the dazzling January 19th double performance of Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) Live 2023 tour, co-hosted by American television personality Gabby Windey and English-born dancer and choreographer Emma Slater.
Raconteur and narrator Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago) guided us through the majestic proclamations of dances, storytelling, and music representing the magnificence and provenance of these rich cultures. The coruscating colors and movements portrayed themes associated with rituals, reverence, and prayers to a Creator for blessings, health and thanksgiving, gladness for the life-giving forces of animals and rain, community pride, and honor to their warriors who protect them.
If the 17-piece Kevin Blanq big band and Kathryn Farmer were not enough to get you in the mood for smooth swinging and dancing, the urbane, bespoke, and suave dancer extraordinaire Manuel Rojas appeared to deliver a dance lesson at 8:30 as a second band, Swing a Delic arrived on stage. With Rojas, it was time to revel in the legacies of Al Minns and Frankie Manning with Lindy Hop, swing outs, tuck-in-turn, jazz, tap, sugar foot walk, breakaway, and swing dance….dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum. Revelers thronged to the dance floor as the buoyant and joyous Rojas drew them in.
Hallelujah Junction featured nine company ballerinas and danseurs draped in the sartorial elegance of black and white attire metaphorically linked both to the keys of a piano and the musically rich, cyclic intones of Adams’s oeuvre.
New York City Center presented the fourth installment of its Fall For Dance Festival, a trio of spectacular, diverse dance offerings and celebration of dance and music, a magical fusion of parallel art forms that expressed the rich sonic and visual imaginings of composers and choreographers alike.
A superb Paul Taylor Dance Company and Orchestra of St. Lukes collaboration. Music and dance lovers will be looking forward to the new artistic director Michael Novak’s work in his “Celebrate the Dancemaker” series from October 28th through November 17, 2019, in the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.
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