This Director Is Bringing Classic Musicals Into the 21st Century

Growing up in Louisiana, Lear deBessonet fell in love with movie musicals. “That’s where my access to theater came from—that, and my mother at the piano,” she says. Now, deBessonet, who was recently named the next artistic director of New York City Center’s Encores! performance series, starting in 2021, will get to revisit some of […]

What It Takes to Radically Reimagine "West Side Story"

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is celebrated across the dance world for her stripped-down, stubbornly abstract choreography; Ivo van Hove across the theater world for his stark, stubbornly tech-heavy reconstructions of plays and movie scripts. But after this week, the two Belgians are likely to be famed, for good or ill, as the pair who kicked […]

"The Steps Are Gravy," Says Tony Winner Christopher Gattelli on Choreographing for Broadway

The 20-somethings doing Broadway Dance Lab’s first-ever Choreography Summer Intensive ended their recent tour of Lincoln Center’s New York Public Library for the Performing Arts with something special. In the seminar room, Tony-winning choreographer Christopher Gattelli awaited them with a conference table laden with Broadway treasures from the library’s collection. Decades-old original sketches and black-and-white […]