Reviews Archives | Contemporary Performance

Cuck Internet and The Maids at St. Ann’s Warehouse

A review of Kip Williams’s adaptation of The Maids at St. Ann's Warehouse examining platform culture, attention labor, recursive identity systems, and contemporary spectatorship.

May 22, 2026

Tere O’Connor’s Construct-a-Guy and The Lace at New York Live Arts reveal forty years of choreographic multiplicity, precision, and expanded consciousness.

Featured·Featured Reviews·In Performance·Reviews

Tere O’Connor’s Construct-a-Guy and The Lace at New York Live Arts: Architectures of Multiplicity

Tere O’Connor’s Construct-a-Guy and The Lace at New York Live Arts bring forty years of choreographic thinking into a single program. These dances reveal O’Connor’s evolving architectures of multiplicity, rigor, and queer complexity, inviting audiences into a system of movement shaped by

December 5, 2025

Person interacting with robotic components.

Reviews·Featured·Featured Reviews

Fragile Bodies: Geumhyung Jeong’s Under Construction

At the Holland Festival, Geumhyung Jeong’s Under Construction turns robotics into ritual, revealing tenderness, care, and fragility between human and machine.

November 20, 2025

The visual performance EXTRA LIFE - with music by Caterina Barbieri, breathtaking lighting design by Yves Godin and actors including the celebrated Adèle Haenel - explores the physical, psychological and imaginary aspects of trauma and recovery. Director, choreographer and past associate artist (2021) Gisèle Vienne (Charleville-Mézières, 1976) continues her study of how we perceive stories and psychological structures.

Featured·Featured Reviews·First Person·Reviews

Can Survival Be Choreographed? Gisèle Vienne’s Extra Life at the Holland Festival

In Extra Life at the Holland Festival, Gisèle Vienne sculpts fog, sound, and time into a choreography of survival, tracing how bodies persist after trauma.

November 13, 2025

Reviews·Featured·Featured Reviews

Oh! The (Body) Horror: Susie Wang’s Burnt Toast at Skirball Center

Is it a hotel? Is it Hell? Why is everyone obsessed and slurping on the complimentary eggnog drink? Burnt Toast at The Skirball Center in NYC, by the Norwegian company Susie Wang, opens inside an all-red hotel lobby that feels like No

November 6, 2025

Scene from Łukasz Twarkowski’s ROTHKO at the Holland Festival featuring a mirrored Chinese restaurant set with actors performing live while a stylized close-up video feed is projected on a massive LED screen above the stage.

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Łukasz Twarkowski’s ROTHKO at the Holland Festival: A Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Łukasz Twarkowski’s ROTHKO, seen at the 2025 Holland Festival, blurs the line between original and fake, theater and screen. Live-feed video, rotating Chinese restaurant sets, and a double-timeline narrative fracture theatrical time into something disorienting, dazzling, and deeply of this moment.

September 25, 2025

Isabelle Huppert kneeling in a pleated peach gown beside a white radiator in Castellucci’s Bérénice at the 2025 Holland Festival.

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Image, Ritual, Collapse: Romeo Castellucci and Isabelle Huppert’s Bérénice at Holland Festival

Romeo Castellucci reimagines Racine’s Bérénice at the 2025 Holland Festival in a stunning performance of image, ritual, and collapse.

June 21, 2025

Reviews·Featured

Perilous Togetherness: Young Boy Dancing Group

The evening with Young Boy Dancing Group was an immersive tapestry of human connection. They dismantled barriers through their use of space and audience interaction, inviting us to reconsider the essence of intimacy and support in the violent present. Their performance, characterized

April 12, 2024

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Gelsey Bell: [MORNING//MOURNING] at Prototype Festival (NYC)

Gelsey Bell: [MORNING//MOURNING]HERE MainstageJanuary 6, 9-22 at 7:30pm and January 7 at 5pmTickets Gelsey Bell is a Brooklyn-based composer, writer, performer, and all-around musical superstar. Her work melds deeply informed research, sonic experimentation, and embodied storytelling. [MORNING//MOURNING] takes us on a journey

January 14, 2023

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Silvana Estrada: MARCHITA at Prototype Festival (NYC)

Silvana Estrada: MARCHITA HERE DOT January 12-14, 6pm and 9:30pm Tickets Silvana Estrada is a Mexican multi-instrumentalist musician who recently won the Latin GRAMMY Award for “Best New Artist.” Their work holds soft vulnerability and fierce fortitude in a delicate balance. Incorporating

January 14, 2023

Anna Karasinska: New Creation, Santarcangelo dei Teatri

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Anna Karasinska – New Creation at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

Anna Karasinska is a Polish-born artist and director who creates radically formally simple pieces as a means to disrupt the traditional hierarchies found in theatre by placing the audience at the heart of her work. Her latest piece ‘New Creation’ is part

July 16, 2022

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Igor Shugaleev – 375 0908 2334 / The body you are calling is currently not available at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

Igor Shugaleev: 375 0908 2334 / The body you are calling is currently not availableSantarcangelo dei TeatriJuly 9 23.00July 10 21.30 Igor Shugaleev is an independent artist and actor from Belarus who creates work at the intersection of dance, theatre and endurance

July 15, 2022

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Dreams Come True, Hichmoul Pilon Production, collectif anthropie e Siamo ovunque – We are Everywhere at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

‘We are Everywhere’ is a project devised by Nous sommes, a French-speaking Swiss initiative of an editorial committee composed of members of Dreams Come true, Hichmoul Pilon Production and anthropie. The Italian committee is called Siamo Ovunque and is based in Bologna.

July 15, 2022

Photo by Tanja Dorendorf T+T Fotografie.jpg

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Mats Staub- Death and Birth in My Life at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

Mats Staub: Death and Birth in My LifeSantarcangelo dei Teatri Mats Staub is an artist based in Berlin whose work lives at the intersection of theatre studies, journalism, film, and exhibition. He identifies as ‘a traveler through the realms of memory.’ His

July 12, 2022

Annamaria Ajmone - La notte è il mio giorno preferito ©Andrea Macchia

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Annamaria Ajmone – La notte è il mio giorno preferito at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

Annamaria Ajmone: La notte è il mio giorno preferitoSantarcangelo dei Teatri Annamaria Ajmone is an Italian dancer and choreographer whose work centres around the idea that the body is a malleable material that has the ability to transform a space into a

July 12, 2022

Catol Teixeira - la peau entre les doigts ©Julie-Folly

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Catol Teixeira – la peau entre les doigts at Santarcangelo dei Teatri

Catol Teixeira is a Geneva-based performer and choreographer from Brazil. Their practice enacts the concept of dance as a collective manifestation and uses improvisation to ask the audience ‘what does it mean to move’ and ask themselves ‘what does it mean to

July 11, 2022

Tip the Ivy Performance, 2022 Photo: kunst-dokumentationen.com

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

Colin Self’s Tip the Ivy at Performance Space New York May 5-7, 2022

Tip the Ivy is the latest multidisciplinary opera by Colin Self. In keeping with the artist’s previous works, it foregrounds its own making as a collaborative group process. Originating from a manuscript, the work mutates through collective authorship by the five collaborators and

May 2, 2022

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

Rimini Protokoll’s Conference of the Absent

There is a crisis! And in times of global crisis, it's all about global cooperation. Nevertheless, this time the crisis is being dealt with locally - on behalf of the world: at a conference that no one needs to book a flight

November 24, 2021

Featured·In Performance·Reviews

Special Effects Festival NYC Jan 9 & 10, 2020

Special Effects Festival January 09-10, 2020@ Wild Project, 195 E 3rd St, New York, NY This year’s edition of Special Effects Festival asks…How do we combine difference?How do we assemble coalition?and what is the power of togetherness. Artist driven and oriented, Special

January 6, 2020

In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Moved by the Motion (Wu Tsang & boychild), Sudden Rise (The Present is Not Enough)

Sudden RiseMoved by the Motion (Wu Tsang & boychild)The Present is Not Enough, HAU1June 28-29 On the curtain of HAU’s proscenium theatre flashes a western archive. Images from a Euro-centric art historical past and present. In the first 30 seconds, we travel

July 5, 2019

In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Mamela Nyamza, Black Privilege (The Present is Not Enough)

Black PrivilegeMamela Nyamza The Present is Not Enough, HAU2June 25-26 From a black void emerges the glimpse of a goddess. Mamela Nyamza, appears perched on top of a bronze wheeled-staircase. Her own bronzed body in the warm light reflects the gold jewelry

July 5, 2019

ELIO GERVASI "THE CHOREOGRAPHIC ENGINE ImpulsTanz

Artist Opportunities·Featured·In Performance·Reviews

ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival 2019 (11 July to 11 August)

ImPulsTanz FestivalVienna, Austria11 July – 11 August 2019More Information – https://www.impulstanz.com/en/festivalinfo/ Founded in 1984, ImPulsTanz has developed into one of the largest festivals of contemporary dance and performance worldwide. Each summer, thousands of dancers, choreographers and artists from all over the world

July 4, 2019

In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Burgerz

BurgerzTravis Alabanza HAU Hebbel am Ufer, BerlinJune 28-30, 2019 In 2016, someone threw a burger at Travis Alabanza. The act occurred in public, and in broad daylight; the burger was accompanied by a transphobic slur. In Alabanza’s not-quite-solo performance Burgerz —presented as part

June 30, 2019

In Performance·Reviews

In Performance: Markus Öhrn, 3 Episodes of Life (Weiner Festwotchen)

3 Episodes of Life: Episode 1 Markus Öhrn May 31-June 9 Wiener Festwochen 3 Episodes of Life: Episode 1 is a reperformance of the violence and brutality present in so many rehearsal rooms stretched to their most grotesque culminating in an hour

June 14, 2019

Reviews

Moving Parts: Isa Spector’s Real Estate at The Brick

Cuck Internet and The Maids at St. Ann’s Warehouse

Tere O’Connor’s Construct-a-Guy and The Lace at New York Live Arts: Architectures of Multiplicity

Fragile Bodies: Geumhyung Jeong’s Under Construction

Can Survival Be Choreographed? Gisèle Vienne’s Extra Life at the Holland Festival

Oh! The (Body) Horror: Susie Wang’s Burnt Toast at Skirball Center

Łukasz Twarkowski’s ROTHKO at the Holland Festival: A Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Image, Ritual, Collapse: Romeo Castellucci and Isabelle Huppert’s Bérénice at Holland Festival

Perilous Togetherness: Young Boy Dancing Group

In Performance: Gelsey Bell: [MORNING//MOURNING] at Prototype Festival (NYC)

In Performance: Silvana Estrada: MARCHITA at Prototype Festival (NYC)

In Performance: Anna Karasinska – New Creation at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

In Performance: Igor Shugaleev – 375 0908 2334 / The body you are calling is currently not available at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

In Performance: Dreams Come True, Hichmoul Pilon Production, collectif anthropie e Siamo ovunque – We are Everywhere at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

In Performance: Mats Staub- Death and Birth in My Life at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

In Performance: Annamaria Ajmone – La notte è il mio giorno preferito at Santarcangelo dei Teatri (Italy)

In Performance: Catol Teixeira – la peau entre les doigts at Santarcangelo dei Teatri

Colin Self’s Tip the Ivy at Performance Space New York May 5-7, 2022

Rimini Protokoll’s Conference of the Absent

Special Effects Festival NYC Jan 9 & 10, 2020

In Performance: Moved by the Motion (Wu Tsang & boychild), Sudden Rise (The Present is Not Enough)

In Performance: Mamela Nyamza, Black Privilege (The Present is Not Enough)

ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival 2019 (11 July to 11 August)

In Performance: Burgerz

In Performance: Markus Öhrn, 3 Episodes of Life (Weiner Festwotchen)

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