The Dance Lens Podcast

IN THIS EDITION: Interview with choreographer Akram Khan in anticipation of Akram Khan Company’s final touring production: Thikra: Night of Remembering. The U.S. tour opens at Lincoln Center July 2-5 , continues to Jacob’s Pillow July 8-12 , and travels this fall to North Carolina and California before continuing internationally. For the past twenty-five years, Akram Khan has been one of the defin...

Today’s guest is Ormsby Wilkins, the longtime Music Director of American Ballet Theatre, who will conclude his tenure with the company at the end of the 2026 summer season after more than two decades shaping its sound. A native of Sydney, Australia, Wilkins has spent more than forty years in ballet. Before joining ABT in 2005, he served as music director of the National Ballet of Canada for sixtee...

Join us for a conversation with choreographer Sophie Laplane and director James Bonas, the collaborators behind Scottish Ballet’s Mary, Queen of Scots (Lincoln Center Koch Theater June 4-7 2026) , which draws on the imagined relationship between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I. The production blends classical ballet, theater, punk aesthetics, and contemporary visual language. Sophie Laplane is the Res...

INTERVIEW: Christine Cox, co-founder and Artistic and Executive Director of BalletX, Philadelphia’s premier contemporary ballet company, which she founded alongside choreographer Matthew Neenan in 2005. In two decades of leadership, Cox has built BalletX into one of the most distinctive forces in contemporary ballet, producing over 150 world premiere works by more than 80 choreographers and perfor...

INTERVIEW: Jessica Lang on career-making, creativity and the hidden realities of becoming a choreographer. In anticipation of the All Lang program at Pacific Northwest Ballet. May 29-June 7 featuring ‘ Her Door to the Sky’ , ‘ Ghost Variations’, and ‘Zigzag’ Lang discusses the creative life and what it really takes to become a choreographer. Lang is one of the world’s most versatile and prolific c...

In this episode, we review the luminous interpretations of The Firebird at Dance Theatre of Harlem and its relationship to New York City Ballet’s. Both works are a deluge of beauty and an ocean of visual richness. Though distinct in style and staging, these productions are deeply connected through history, lineage, and artistic exchange. At the center of that connection is Arthur Mitchell, foundin...

REVIEW: Kyle Abraham’s Cassette Vol. 1 at NYU Skirball transforms the 1980s into a neon-lit dreamscape of camp, nostalgia, and grief. Blending choreography, pop culture, and memory, the work moves through vignettes that blur the line between past and present, surface and undercurrent. In this episode, we explore how Abraham and his company A.I.M turn analog aesthetics into something more fragile a...

IN THIS EDITION: REVIEW: American Ballet Theater Spring Season 2026 “Othello” in 2 casts. What does Othello reveal about ballet, then and now? This episode revisits American Ballet Theatre’s landmark production through a contemporary lens, tracing its ambition alongside the questions it leaves unresolved—around gender, agency, and whose stories are allowed to take center stage. Join me on Substack...

IN THIS EDITION -Review: Amercian Ballet Theater in The Firebird. Performed on March 13, 2026. -Misty Copeland at the Oscars FIREBIRD REVIEW: This was my first time seeing The Firebird by Alexei Ratmansky which premiered in 2012 and hasn’t been performed since 2018, almost a decade ago. This Firebird ’s dark whimsy calls back to earlier fairytales , like those of the aptly named Brothers Grimm. It...

IN THIS EDITION: -Interview with Serge Laurent, Director of Dance & Cultural Programs at Van Cleef & Arpels on the role of curation in dance’s development. -Upcoming LIVE TALK Seeing Dance: The Sleeping Beauty Then & Now Tues Feb 24. As the Dance Reflections Festival returns to New York City (February 19–March 21, 2026) , I spoke with Serge Laurent , Director of Dance & Cultural Programs at Van Cl...

Silenced for one and a half centuries, Kathak dance, suppressed under British rule, went underground—yet survived, through secrecy and lineage. SPEAK Artists (L to R) Rukhmani Mehta, Dormeshia, Racha Nivas, Michelle Dorrance; photo by Margo Moritz. Rooted in North India, Kathak is a classical form built on storytelling and rhythm, its name derived from the Sanskrit word katha , meaning story. It f...

Alastair Macaulay is one of the most influential dance critics of all time—or, as some would say, the greatest of all time (a title he himself disputes, though I wholeheartedly maintain that he is the singular GOAT) . His career spans more than four decades across the UK, Europe, and the United States. A Cambridge graduate, he began writing about the performing arts in the late 1970s and quickly b...

“People say, ‘stay in your lane, you’re just an artist, but art was born out of politics—revolutions, wars, oppression. Tap dance emerged because enslaved people weren’t allowed to make music. Dancers come from communities impacted by inequity—Black, brown, queer, immigrant, women. There’s a direct political dimension to that.” Bridgie Nix What is the life of a showgirl? It might just be in politi...

Dance and the military might seem worlds apart—but their histories are surprisingly intertwined. Some of the world’s oldest ballet schools were tied to state military academies, and Napoleon himself organized the Paris Opera Ballet’s uniforms and promotion system that is still in place today. The physical rigor, the hierarchy, the discipline—the dancer and the soldier have much in common in their...

Ahmad Joudeh’s phenomenal path is the subject of a new Documentary “The Dancer”, which premiere’s at San Francisco Dance Film Festival on November 8th. Born in a refugee camp in Syria, Joudeh literally risked his life to study dance in secret and eventually became a dancer with Dutch National Ballet. He’s now a member of Golden State Ballet in California alongside being an international activist f...

At CARVALHO, New York gallery in Brooklyn, Cuban choreographer and interdisciplinary artist Claudia Hilda turns the experience of migration into a moving meditation on memory and belonging. Her new installation, Neither Here, Nor There – The Migrant Body , expands the language of dance into a 24-foot projection where silhouetted figures emerge and fade, moving as memory does—sometimes vivid, somet...

In This Edition: PODCAST: Alec Knight on Balanchine, Dreams, and His Western Symphony Debut In this episode of The Dance Lens podcast , we sat down with Alec Knight, Soloist at New York City Ballet, on the cusp of his debut in George Balanchine’s Western Symphony . From early frustrations training in Australia to chasing the Balanchine dream across continents, Knight takes us through the unlikely...

In This Edition: -INTERVIEW Podcast With Ballet Conductor Garrett Keast. —REVIEW: The Art World & Dance: Meaningful Collaboration or Performative (literally) Fluff? OBSERVER REVIEW -DEEP DIVE Episode 1 of Our August Swan Lake Deep Dive: The Story INTERVIEW (full podcast above) Garrett Keast , an American conductor whose career spans both opera and ballet across international stages, has emerged as...

In This Edition: -Podcast with Karen Valby, author of Swans of Harlem -A few book recs With the approaching slow slog of August upon us, it’s a perfect moment to catch up on the books we’ve been meaning to read. Here are a couple that I really can’t recommend enough and one to look forward to. Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby About (and partly by) the founding dancers of Dance Theater of Harlem, who...

In This Edition: -Podcast interview with Yuan Yuan Tan -Notes on the complexities of artistic exchange and the new work Lady White Snake. Yuan Yuan Tan, San Francisco’s great ballerina, almost never became a dancer. Her entire career was decided by a single coin toss. Arguing about whether or not she’d be allowed to study such an impractical pursuit as ballet, her parents said, “The Buddha will de...

IN THIS EDITION: -Podcast & Note On Gillian Murphy’s Career -Recommended show (Lady White Snake) -Update on this Substack:) The career of American Ballet Theatre’s Gillian Murphy has spanned a rare arc. A jewel in the annals of ballet history, she has escorted the changing times and evolving art form for the better part of three decades. And on July 18, the artist makes her final departure from th...

In This Edition: -Podcast of A Review of Paris Opera’s Sleeping Beauty -The Text of the Review in English -Where to Watch 6 Different Versions of Sleeping Beauty -The Review in French/ La critique en français Revolution and Reverie: Paris Opera Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty at the Bastille THE CONTEXT Seeing the Paris Opera Ballet in The Sleeping Beauty , or La Belle au Bois Dormant , is to look down h...

In this edition: -A Review: Olga Smirnova in Giselle with American Ballet Theater. -Where Watch Now Olga Smirnova in Dutch National’s Giselle Photo: Alex Gouliaev The Review: American culture is a casual one, in its language, in its sartorial expression, in its treatment of the arts and artists. But when a ballerina like Olga Smirnova is in the house—a dancer that descends from a culture that for...

The clangs in the march of time in the ballet world have gone from a few distinct notes to a cacophony of endings, beginnings and shifts in philosophies. In this edition: -Gonzalo Garcia’s new role at Miami City Ballet -Misty Copeland’s retirement and legacy —Ashton Triple on Marquee TV —Ballet of the week: Ashton’s A Month In The Country Gonzalo Garcia, former NYC Ballet Principal will become Mia...

We’re back to regularly scheduled programming. Thanks for bearing with us during a brief hiatus while we switched coasts! In this episode, we explore how dance became a powerful tool of resistance, expression, and cultural identity during times of political upheaval. From Arthur Mitchell breaking barriers in classical ballet and founding Dance Theatre of Harlem, to Alvin Ailey’s deeply spiritual m...