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Press Quotes

“The songs and the dances in ‘The Music that made us dance’ blew my mind, busted my gut and broke my heart. Bazell's rich textures and flowing group configurations illuminated the spirit of social consciousness lost in time.”
--Lewis Whittington , Broad Street Review 4/06

“ Bazell’s ensemble of six women were profoundly in the moment, demonstrating her ability to harness their natural instincts into compelling movement designs.”
--Elizabeth Zimmer, Philadelphia Inquire, on Lincoln Center Out of Doors. 6/04

"An incredibly strong, fluid, give-all and more troupe of dancers ... astonishing beauty ... captivating ... arresting ... dangerously physical."
--Anne-Marie Mulgrew, Dance Insider, 9/00, on Quiescence.

"Bazell is one of the rare independent solo choreographers to have established herself through the excellence of both her teaching and her raw, spunky dance."
-- Deni Kasrel, Philadelphia City Paper, 1/00

"Girly men and manly girls will appreciate her no-nonsense approach to movement invention... Wild yet down-to-earth? Tender yet aggressive? Yep… that’s Myra Bazell."
-- Jonathan David Jackson, Philadelphia City Paper, 1/00

"Bazell's Trapture is a wonderful collision of rapture, capture, and trap - hot themes explored in a postmodern style. Contact lifts, same-gender partnering, acrobatic expertise, heavy breathing (we no longer mask our efforts), and a little club/hip-hop - these are elements of the new norm."
-- Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Dance Magazine, 3/00, on Trapture.

"The most ambitious piece of the evening was Myra Bazell's long and complicated Merge. ... I was struck by several of the individual elements of the dance and especially the energy and brilliance of the dancers. This is a piece that richly deserves re-viewing; I hope that we get that chance soon."
-- Robert Ackerman, Philadelphia City Paper, 3/11/99, on Merge. PA Ballet

"tradition of physical risk, brilliant technique and intense emotion ... very affecting."
-- Robert Ackerman, Philadelphia City Paper, 2/27/98, on Trapture.

"choreography took risks which were both shocking and gorgeous, and the dancers embraced these risks with graceful hunger."
-- Jennifer Callaghan, Swarthmore Phoenix, 2/27/98, on Trapture.

"erotically charged movement essay that succeeds in transposing her breakneck style to an ensemble of dancers. ... The scaffold sequence builds into a kalaidescope of horizontal, vertical, tangled and inverted bodylines, that were at times simply breathtaking. ... Bazell's signature athleticism is stamped on her dancers effectively and dramatically. An impressive task, since her style -- which she usually executes with full-throttle abandon -- up to now seemed so explosively singular." -- Lewis Whittington, Philadelphia Gay News, 2/98, onTrapture.

"If there is such a thing as raw elegance, Bazell taps its essence."
-- Merilyn Jackson, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/21/98, on Trapture.

"Bazell's fearlessness imbues her young dancers with a sharpness beyond their years."
-- Merilyn Jackson, Philadelphia Weekly, 2/18/98, on Trapture.

"intense, physically demanding work ... risk taking, creative costuming, a ton of attitude, and haunting music."
-- Gene D'Alessandro, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/15/98, on .Trapture.

"Bazell's gang showed fierce, edgy movement."
-- Elizabeth Zimmer, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/13/98, on Trapture.

"If anything marks Bazell's work, it's passion. She takes things to an intense edge. Often with an audible, animal energy."
-- Deni Kasrel, Philadelphia City Paper, 5/9/97, on Downwind.

"Myra Bazell offered a fierce solo, brilliantly enacting caged passion and frustration."
-- Robert Ackerman, Philadelphia City Paper, 10/18/96, on Sideshow.

"primal, edgy, intense and wild display of theatrical dance."
-- Deni Kasrel, Philadelphia City Paper, 10/3/96, on Traces.

"One of the major stars of the Philadelphia dance community ... Her dance incorporates the vocabularies of hip-hop and break dancing and she has made a name for herself touring Europe over the past two decades."
-- Sabrina Rubin, Philadelphia Magazine, 6/96, "25 Hippest People in Philadelphia."

"wild hyperkinetic ultra-physical dreamscape of life and love in an eerie urban milieu."
-- Deni Kasrel, Philadelphia City Paper, 5/3/96, on Traces.

"Bazell's strengths as a performer -- the way she masters metaphos of power in body weight pushed and pulled and printed into the floor -- manifest themselves in her choreography."
-- Eileen Fisher, Philadelphia Weekly, 5/8/96, on Traces.

"full of attitude -- an attitude of intense spirit, blazing physicality, wild wit and curious creativity."
-- Deni Kasrel, Philadelphia City Paper, 12/1/95, on Scrap.

"The piece abounded in such fresh, surreal images. Bazell was a formidably androgynous presence, with buzz cut, muscles, angels' wings and a wand."
-- Miriam Seidel, Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/18/95, on Scrap.

"This multi-media diatribe is a junk yard of ideas colliding into one another including scraps of dances, of music, video, technique, narrative, sex. ... Scrap careens into an artistic nether region, melting our expectations of dance and movement ... Scrap escorts our senses on a ballsy point-of-no-return trip."
-- Lewis Whittington, Philadelphia Gay News, 11/24/95, on Scrap.

"In total impact, Philadelphia modern dancers Myra Bazell and Darla Stanley made as deep an impression. Like Podcasy, they are sensual dancers who make dancing so three dimensional that the experience of watching them is tactile as well as visual."
-- Nancy Goldner, Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/11/93, season dance summary.

"Myra Bazell, dancing to the poem "Cloud Brothers," was especially lovely. She has the courage to let her arms fall and sway as fully as the momentum of her torso carries them, and this freedom gives her dancing an unusual richness."
-- Nancy Goldner, Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/13/92, on Group Motion's Silent Winds.

 

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