“On January 10, 1974, Transports et Transit Maritimes Associés came to the rue de Tournon and took away three large metal trunks and I closed the Paris office of The Paris Review for good.”

By evening a thick fog was rising from the lagoon, misting off the quays and along alleys, sonorous and empty.

Mark Morris brings back his iconic solo dance. A young saddhu, a lone devotee, with nothing to his name but passion for the form of god he’s chosen to worship and the rag of a dhoti wrapped around his loins, crouches in a ball in dim golden light a…

The choreographer Mark Morris’s latest work is a rendering of Layla and Majnun, an Azerbaijani opera composed by Uzeyir Hajibeyli in 1908. This fall it launched Cal Performance’s season, premiering at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley on September 30. Layl…

Suzanne Farrell revives a rare Balanchine ballet. “Make the tempo be your pulse.” This remark by Suzanne Farrell—at a lecture/demo this past Sunday at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts—was both an instruction and…

The nonlogic of Dorrance Dance’s ETM: Double Down.Remember Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia in the movie Big, jumping around a supersize electronic keyboard on the showroom floor in FAO Schwarz? There’s a moment in Dorrance Dance’s ETM: Double Down, just …

No one could miss the magic. Cool alleys of giant pines wind through the park, the entrance by footbridge leads over a creek; far below, you can glimpse striated mounds accreted by live mineral springs. And then: the stately grounds. Even today, in i…

Bess Wohl’s play Small Mouth Sounds returns to the stage.My friend D’s first retreat was a dive into the deep end. It was ten days long, silent, held at a famous meditation center, and led by a renowned teacher. On her first evening, after orientat…

This summer we’re introducing a series of new columnists. Today, meet Jeff Seroy, who has written on ballet before for the Daily.“It’s got everything, including a Maypole.”I asked the choreographer Mark Morris—erstwhile bad boy of the dance scen…

The challenges of an all-male ballet troupe.Like Oulipo fiction or gluten-free bakeries, an all-male ballet troupe draws its allure from what’s missing. You wonder: Can they really pull it off? How not bad can it be? After all, Balanchine, in oracula…

Suzanne Farrell at the New York Public Library.Suzanne Farrell—the ballerina who was George Balanchine’s last and arguably greatest muse—appears tonight at the New York Public Library’s Live! series, cosponsored by NYU’s Center for Ballet a…

An American in Paris leaps from screen to stage.About halfway through Vincente Minnelli’s 1951 film An American in Paris, we glimpse a sign: À LOUER—APPARTEMENTS STUDIOS DE GRAND LUXE—RENSEIGNEMENTS AU FOND DE LA COUR. We see it in a courtyard throug…

Sixty-four years later, The Tales of Hoffmann continues to delight and perplex.Lovers of the recherché have flocked to see Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1951 Tales of Hoffmann at Film Forum, where it’s still showing for one more day. In a…