Ever since it was announced that Baz Luhrmann’s spectacular (spectacular!) movie musical Moulin Rouge! would be adapted for the stage, we’ve been cautiously excited. The 2001 film feels like a natural fit for Broadway, what with its genre-bending soundtrack stocked with absurdly catchy mash-ups, decadent costumes and sets, epic production numbers and show-within-a-show premise. Not […]

Last year, it looked like “So You Think You Can Dance” might be on its final season. Viewership and ratings were down, and the show seemed to be trying to hang on by switching up its format, focusing on young talent ages 8 to 13 instead of the adult dancers audiences were used to. But […]

I’ll admit it: I’ve been a Sonya Tayeh fangirl since I was a teen. Like many aspiring dancers from areas of the country where dance is a less appreciated art form, I watched “So You Think You Can Dance?” religiously. Living in a town hundreds of miles from anything remotely resembling contemporary dance, Tayeh’s first […]

An eclectic mix of artists reenvisions Martha Graham’s Lamentation.  PeiJu Chien-Pott in Lamentation. Photo by Hibbard Nash Photography, Courtesy MGDC.   They’re choreographers you would never expect to see sharing a bill with Martha Graham: Modern dancer Kyle Abraham, tapper Michelle Dorrance, contemporary abstractionist Liz Gerring and Sonya Tayeh of “So You Think You Can […]

The “So You Think You Can Dance” choreographer tackles martial arts and opera in off-Broadway’s Kung Fu.   When Sonya Tayeh got a call from her agent last summer about choreographing Kung Fu, she didn’t hesitate. The off-Broadway play, which tells the story of Bruce Lee’s life, has a team the hard-hitting, edgy choreographer dreamed […]