This weekend the Atlanta Ballet presents its "New Choreographic Voices" program, featuring works by Christopher Wheeldon, Helen Pickett and the Atlanta Ballet's own Tara Lee. Lee's work, "Pavo", is a fascinating story; it involved a collaboration with Atlanta based composer Nickitas Demos, and Catherine Tully of 4dancers.org did an interview with Lee at The Huffington Post in which Lee talks about the work, and about how she became a choreographer. There's a video interview embedded in the story that's really worth checking out.

The program begins with Wheeldon's "Rush", set to music by Bohuslav Martino, and continues with Pickett's "Prayer of Touch" to music by Felix Mendelssohn. The Atlanta Ballet site is a great dance company site; the details on the New Choreographic Voices program include a really rich presentation of video, composer biographies and detail of each work. The site also includes a really cool section they call Resources that includes sections on "Ballet Terms and Positions" and a "Ballet FAQs".

"New Choreographic Voices" is at the Atlanta Ballet May 18-20.

Kay Wilder and Ernesto vs Bastian's new single "Forgotten Summer" is out at Beatport, and it's a great way to start getting ready for a really good summer. We got the original mix when it came out yesterday, and went back today to get the Julian Wess and Mike Carey Remix. The Wess and Carey Remix is dreamier, with a lot of cool instrumentation woven into the still-driving track. We've been listening to the original at Soundcloud for a couple of weeks, and it's a really strong, straight-up Trance track, bangin' and well arranged. That leaves the Solid Stone Remix --- the preview we checked out sounded really good too, so it's probably tomorrow's purchase.

Here's an excerpt of the track, from Bastian's Soundcloud, and to buy it, head over to Beatport.

The Joffrey Ballet's Spring Desire is a richly successful evening; it features three works, "Age of Innocence" by Edwaard Liang, "In the Night" by Jerome Robbins, and the world premiere of "Incantations" by Val Caniparoli. Spring Desire continues this week, from Thursday through Sunday, and ticket information is available at the Joffrey website.

Johnny Nevin wrote about the Joffrey performance here at aotpr.com, and has also taken a much more in-depth look at the making of Edwaard Liang's richly enchanting "Age of Innocence" at 4dancers.org. Here's a video collage of photographs by Herbert Migdoll of scenes from "Age of Innocence".

There are a lot of different worlds in the galaxy of Electronic / Dance Music, and more appearing all the time as DJ/producers find new sounds and new ways to put them together. It's a universe of many voices, but among all of the creative and energetic artists that keep the beat-driven grooves changing all of the time, UK Producer / DJ / Artist Matt Darey has always managed to be one of the most forward-looking, one of the most resilient, and one of the most dependable when it comes to just bringing it.

He's been doing it for awhile and his audience keeps growing, partly because he brings such an eclectic and open-minded approach to his productions, his world-wide DJ tours, and his podcast radio show Nocturnal. Along with Above & Beyond's (here's a story we just did about them) Trance Around The World, which featured a guest mix by Darey in a recent episode, Nocturnal is one of the best ways there is to hear new music, especially in the always-changing landscape that runs from progressive to trance. Darey's DJ sets are in demand around the world (he was in Moscow a couple of weeks ago, he's in Honolulu a few weeks from now) and his productions and remixes are always worth checking out. Speaking of which ...

He's just released a new track with Stan Kolev called "Follow You" featuring a great vocal by Aelyn, not to mention briliant vocal production by Darey and Kolev. It's at Juno and Beatport, and we'll try to feature it in our On The Side section soon, but we still like this track from a couple of months ago called "Hold Your Breath". So definitely check out "Follow You", but don't miss this; it features an inspired vocal performance by Leah, and this is Darey's Soundcloud excerpt --- the full release is also at Beatport and Juno.

The Joffrey Ballet's "Spring Desire" is a beautiful, masterful evening, made out of elegance and precisely focused inspiration; it opened April 25 at Chicago's legendary Auditorium Theatre, and will run through the beginning of May.

"Spring Desire" starts out with Edwaard Liang's "Age of Innocence", an intricately conceived and beautifully performed work of profound insight. I wrote about the making of the piece in an article at 4dancers.org called "The Choreography of Understanding", and in the process I had the chance to see one of the rehearsals for it. In a way it's a revelation to see the movement isolated in the bright light of the Joffrey's expansive rehearsal studio, repeated again and again until it shows the multiple perspectives of individual performance, ensemble precision and choreographic architecture, but it's nothing like seeing the lights come up on it at the Auditorium. There's a depth to the staging, a harmony to its richly woven movement-fabric, a brightness in the dancers who perform in it, that immerses you in it's rich, brooding story.

The second work in "Spring Desire" is a widely respected work by Jerome Robbins entitled "In the Night", set to four Chopin Nocturnes. The Nocturnes are performed live, and beautifully, by Paul James Lewis, as six dancers weave a hopelessly enchanting spell with Robbins' movement design. The program notes say that the "exquisitely romantic pas de deux explore love in all its phases", and although "exquisitly romantic" is exactly what they are, the graceful eloquence of the Jofferey dancers adds a whole new kind of love to the list.

The last work in the show is the world premiere of "Incantations" by Val Caniparoli that I won't even try to describe; you just have to go see it. It starts out with a nonstop energy that could be the finale of almost anything else, then one of the most effective lighting changes you'll ever see brings everything way down, and it finishes, it finishes, maybe I shouldn't say how it finishes. You should just go see it.

Watching the Joffrey work is beyond impressive; the performance is at a level that's stunning in its gracefulness, its energy and its commitment. In three very different works, "Spring Desire" showcases what can happen when a group of richly talented people work really hard together to make something brilliant. This is a band where everybody knows how to play; this is a show to go see.

Spring Desire is at the Auditorium Theater through May 6, tickets are at the Joffrey (10 E. Randolph Street) and Roosevelt Box Offices or from Ticketmaster at (800) 982-2787.

Powerplay fyi keyboard player, writer, and producer Ruben Agosto is just back from the ASCAP I Create Music Conference in Hollywood, and the new Powerplay album, "A Normal Life" is coming out later this spring. Here's a short intro interview Ruben did at the Heart & Soul studios just after finishing mastering on the album.

PowerPlay FYI features some of the most talented and accomplished performers around; their two vocalists (Pam Fernandez and Peter Frank) are both featured in the tracks used behind the photo collages in the video. "A Normal Life" covers a wide range of soulful, smooth jazz and funk-driven beats. Several of the arrangements are by Tower of Power arranger Dave Eskridge. The whole album is already at PowerPlayFYI.bandcamp.com for full strreaming. Not to mention, check out the photo of Ruben hangin' in Hollywood with Lee Ritenour.

4dancers.org has been running a series of exceptionally informative articles about dance wellness, including a series of four articles by 4dancers Dance Wellness Editor (how can you not love a site that has a Dance Wellness Editor) Jan Dunn. Dunn's series began with a two-part article called "Dance Wellness: Causes of Injuries (Risk Factors), in which she provides an impressively helpful examination of many, many ways in which dancers can reduce their risk of injury. Part 3 of the series covers what to do if you do get injured, again, with a thorough and very practical look at how to make sure any injury gets better, not worse. The most recent installment is about dance conditioning, and like the others, includes valuable advice from one of the field's most respected professionals.

Complementing Dunn's series was a really insightful article by Emily Kate Long called "Dancers: Exploring Identity, Passion & Injury", in which Long examines many of the personal issues that dancers must deal with when injuries interupt their training and careers.

Here's where you can read the full articles:
Articles by Jan Dunn:
Dance Wellness: Causes of Injuries (Risk Factors) Part I
Dance Wellness: Causes of Injuries (Risk Factors) Part II
Keeping Dancers Dancing: "Help I Have an Injury - What Do I Do?"
Keeping Dancers Dancing - Conditioning
and by Emily Kate Long:
Dancers: Exploring Identity, Passion & Injury"

Trance music is melodic, beat-driven music with its own standards and its own stars, which is not surprising, because in many ways, trance music is its own world. Almost all of it is made by DJ/Producers, for the trance-aware to find at places like junodownload.com or beatport.com, and especially for other DJs to find and play for their audiences (and the trance audience is global and immense).

It's a world full of energy and imagination, and there might not be anybody more energetic or imaginative when it comes to making and finding great trance music than the UK based DJ trio Above & Beyond. It's a strangely separate set of realities; if you know trance music, you're wondering why in the world anybody would explain who Above & Beyond is, and if you don't know trance music, you're wondering who in the world Above & Beyond is. Just to give you some idea, one of their recent San Francisco shows sold out in two minutes.

It seems like they tour non-stop, but every week they also put together one of the best podcast radio shows on the web, at trancearoundtheworld.com. All of the weekly shows are archived there (they've done more than four hundred), and there's a link to a free download of each show in the upper left part of the page, or you can get there by clicking here.

The reason they can give all this music away for free is because they make a lot of it, and they're so central to the world of trance music that the other labels and producers featured on the podcast are more than happy to be there. It's all free, it respects the artists, and it's an amazing mix, week after week, of some of the most forward-looking producers and artists around anywhere.

Above & Beyond will be in Chicago at the Congress Theater on Saturday, May 12. They're playing with Cosmic Gate and Matt Zo, both of whom regularly show up on Trance Around the World with killer tracks and remixes. We're going.

Hedwig Dances' current presentation of "Vanishing Points", a full length program of four original choreographic works, is so imaginative and effective that you have a feeling of seeing something brand new, a Company full of innovation and forward-looking ideas. That's exactly what you're seeing, but you're also seeing a Company that is in its twenty-seventh successful year, so "Vanishing Points" is not only bright and surprising, it's also a carefully woven presentation of professionalism in every detail, and there are a lot of amazing details. Two of the four works feature original scores, and the evening includes unusually bold and effective set designs. Perhaps most surprising of all, even though the show is expansive and multi-faceted, it's actually only danced by six performers, but you're not even conscious of that unless you study the program.

Artistic Director Jan Bartoszek's "Dance of Forgotten Steps" opens the program in a sophisticated, successful integration of movement, music, set design and video. "It's Not About You", a new work by Cuban-born, Berlin-based choreographer Judith Sanchez Ruiz, is a focused, well-crafted duet, while Victor Alexander's "Line of Sighs" explores an intriguing interaction between another remarkably imaginative set design and three dancers. "Vanishing Points" closes with a new work by Michel Rodriguez (whose "Moi Aussi" was a finalist in the 2010 A.W.A.R.D. show), an intricate and driving ensemble piece entitled "Por Dentro".

"Vanishing Points" is a surprising experience in many, many ways. The original scores for "Dance of Forgotten Steps" (by Michael Caskey) and for "Line of Sighs" (by Arianna Brame and Petra Valoma) are musically and choreographically successful, the video in "Dance of Forgotten Steps" is so much a part of the movement it goes way beyond what the term "multi-media" usually suggests, and the performances by company members Victor Alexander, Michel Rodriguez, Maray Gutierrez, Edson Cabrera and Jessie Gutierrez, with Guest Artist Katie Graves, are consistently strong in four very different settings. "Vanishing Points" is at Theater 773 this Friday and Saturday (April 20-21) at 8PM and Sunday, April 22 at 3PM.

Robert Poss is a forward-leaning composer because he's such an innovative guitarist --- he's been called a "guitar genius" by Tape Op Magazine, and an "enormously underrated guitar theorist" by producer Steve Albini, who observed, "the way he structures the song around the drone instead of finding a drone to fit into the song I think is wholly unique." Most people first heard of him after he and Susan Stenger founded Band of Susans, whose music Robert Palmer described in Rolling Stone Magazine as "soaring sonic architecture", and since 1995, he has composed extensively for Choreography and Film, continuing to explore the myriad possibilities of a musical universe that few can navigate the way he does.

Settings: Music for Dance, Film, Fashion and Industry is Poss' latest release, newly available as a digital download at sites like Amazon. The album is a fourteen track collection of Poss' newest work, most of it originally composed for choreographers Alexandra Beller, Sally Gross and Gerald Casel. Settings opens with three tracks written for Alexandra Beller's "Other Stories", which her company, Alexandra Beller / Dances, is presenting in seven performances this April at New York's Joyce Soho, with Poss performing live.

"One of the things Alexandra and I have in common, one of the many," Poss says, "is that we operate in the realm between 'high art' culture and 'popular culture'. We're not afraid to be brainy and cerebral, but we're also not afraid to get down and dirty." That's only one of the dimensional spectrums that Poss' music, and Poss' approach to Music, explores. A few times through Settings: Music for Dance, Film, Fashion and Industry will reveal many more.