Our Readers' Choice winners. Photo credits, clockwise from top left: Michael Slobodian, courtesy TU Dance; Screenshot via HiHo Kids YouTube; Courtesy LUNA; Christopher Duggan, courtesy Jacob's Pillow; Jay Newman, courtesy Kinetic Light
We asked you for nominations, compiled your suggestions and had you vote on your favorites. Here's what you chose:
Alice Sheppard in DESCENT. Photo by MANCC/Chris Cameron
You nominated the best performances you've seen so far in 2018, and we narrowed them down to our favorites. Now it's time to cast your vote to decide who will be featured in our December issue!
Voting is open until September 17. Only one submission per person will be counted.
Alice Sheppard photographed by Jayme Thornton for Dance Magazine
It can be hard to focus when Alice Sheppard dances.
Her recent sold-out run of DESCENT at New York Live Arts, for instance, offered a constellation of stimulation. Onstage was a large architectural ramp with an assortment of peaks and planes. There was an intricate lighting and projection design. There was a musical score that unfolded like an epic poem. There was a live score too: the sounds of Sheppard and fellow dancer Laurel Lawson's bodies interacting with the surfaces beneath them.
And there were wheelchairs. But if you think the wheelchairs are the center of this work, you're missing something vital about what Sheppard creates.