Reign, Concert News, March 19, 2010, Antwerp, Belgium

Reign is sublimely poetic and intimate, with a beautiful solo danced by Eva Dewaele to the music of Rachmaninov and Mendelssohn. Mostly Cello and Piano accompany the dancers while they execute diagonal and circular movements with precision and grace. From the three works of the evening, Reign keeps closest to the classical ballet technique.

The Oklahoman, By Kathleen Redwine
‘Thr3e by Thr3e’ inventive, surprising
April 28, 2010,
"Zephyrus,” choreographed by Helen Pickett, was the final ballet. Pickett, a New York City-based choreographer, said, "Zephyrus is the fleetest and softest of winds.” The dancers in this energetic work were, indeed, like the wind. Some sections soared, some whispered, but all contained a fluidity and lightness that created a bright, exuberant, ballet. Of special note in this work was the duet, danced by Emily Fine and Ronnie Underwood.

TSUKIYO Reviews

Boston Herald by Keith Powers, October 24, 2009
Boston Ballet’s ‘Passions’ right on Pointe
A world premiere of Pickett’s “Tsukiyo,” danced by Lia Cirio and Sabi Varga, showed that Nissinen’s faith in this choreographer - this is her third commission by the company - is not misplaced. Pickett’s language is profound, fluid and intimate. Set to a minimalist sonata by Arvo Part, the dancers rarely released each other, but never seemed to cling. Liquid and unique lifts, touches and bends let the enigmatic love story unfold almost as an afterthought - it was hard not to focus solely on the movement.

The Simmons Voice, by Shannon Brown, October 29, 2009
Like the quiet kid in class who does not raise her hand but aces every test, "Tsukiyo" was the stand out performance at World Passions… The most powerful aspect of Tsukiyo is the way the dancers express this desire and confusion with their entire bodies, from their facial expressions to their fingers and their toes. The beautiful choreography was exquisitely performed and created a powerful piece that stayed with the audience long after the curtain closed.

The Boston Globe By Thea Singer October 24, 2009
Duets heighten troupe’s ‘Passions’
From an emotional standpoint, the night’s two duets - bare to the bone - were the most searing. Helen Pickett’s “Tsukiyo’’ (Moonlit Night) hangs somewhere between a lullaby and a first kiss. The dance is a paean to romantic mystery, each partner sensing the other first through sheer chemistry, later by touch.

Patriot Ledger, by Iris Fanger, October 29, 2009
Helen Pickett’s world premiere, “Tsukiyo,” with music by Arvo Part, one of the most distinctive works to now join the troupe’s repertory…

The Dig By JONATHAN DONALDSON
A highlight of the program is the duet, Tsukiyo ("Moonlit Night"), an original work by choreographer/actor Helen Pickett. "I want people to feel the beauty of possibility," says the choreographer. World Passions promises to be a night of intrigue for star-crossed lovers, embodying, as Pickett herself puts it, "the walk up the stairs that is the best part of the affair."

The New York Times By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
DANCE REVIEW | ASPEN SANTA FE BALLET
Evening of Adventuresome Premieres
February 19, 2009

Given all the hand wringing about the dire state of contemporary ballet, it is good to be reminded that new work is being made all the time and that much of it is of at least some interest. Genius choreographers might not come around very often; choreographers with potential do.

Helen Pickett is one, judging by “Petal,” which had its New York premiere on Wednesday at the Joyce Theater courtesy of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. The small company (just 12 dancers) has adventuresome tastes, sampling from a range of choreographic languages. Though sometimes ragged, in both style and endurance, the performers gamely threw themselves into the disparate works with admirable verve.

“Petal” combines a sophisticated sense of spacing with a resonant exploration of emotional discovery. Eddies of social groupings swirl within a stage bounded by large white screens and suffused by Todd Elmer’s gorgeously lush lighting design of Easter-egg yellows, pinks and oranges. A sense of restless female desire pervades the choreography, which sets intimate duets and solos within more formal group patterns, much as pockets of tenderness bloom within the relentless music by Philip Glass and Thomas Montgomery Newman.

There are many styles in play here, including Twyla Tharp’s tough, sexy female athleticism and, most strongly, the aggressively buckling, rippling movement language of William Forsythe, in whose company Ms. Pickett danced for many years. But Ms. Pickett looks to be finding a voice of her own.

The Courier-Journal By Andrew Adler
October 7, 2008  Louisville Ballet

We were introduced to Pickett’s work last season in upon your held-out hand,... Of the three works rolled out on this program, this one is the most likely to land in the “high art” category…sinewy bodies moving through space in unconventional ways, with mere curtain panels for sets, high brow music, and no real story. But that’s probably why I like it so much, and why I also like Balanchine’s leotard ballets…the dancers are truly at the center of the dance. Costuming and lighting were magical, and the dancers did justice to Pickett’s demanding choreography.

Denver Post
By Kyle MacMillan, Fine Arts Critic
November 3, 2008

The program's highlight was Helen Pickett's "Petal" (2008), which inventively explores the intersection of ballet and modern dance.

A catchy American Presence
By Allison Tracy, Special to The Berkshire Eagle
Saturday, August 16
BECKET — "Petal," by rising choreographer Helen Picket, is a delicate, Power-Point show…turning everything inside out with the greatest beauty and elegance.
The pace is swift and dazzling, brilliantly lit, beautifully costumed. Finesse is all.

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet offers delightful program
Friday, August 15, 2008
By Wendy Liberatore, Gazette Reporter
BECKET, Mass. —The program opens strong with Helen Pickett’s bright “Petal.” The men are bees to the female flower, trying to feed off their limbs that trail off in unexpected directions.
Moving to the hum of music by Philip Glass and Thomas Montgomery Newman, the dancers are marvelous in this counter-intuitive dance. The legs and arms are independent from the rolling groins, directing the dancers in unanticipated trajectories…unpredictable and delightful.

The Boston Globe
In varied program, troupe gets its kicks
By Janine Parker Globe Correspondent / August 15, 2008
BECKET - Artistic director Tom Mossbrucker and executive director Jean-Philippe Malaty are committed to presenting contemporary classical dance with an emphasis on commissioning new works. Helen Pickett's "Petal," which premiered in February, solidly affirms the importance of such sponsorship.

The title is apt for such a sunny piece, though fortunately there are hints of mystery and tension among the four couples. For instance, in the partnering, the women are never prettily presented like fragile dolls in need of assistance. When offered, they manage to convey both wariness and a shrugging acceptance, willing to investigate how an extra hand can exploit and heighten their movements. The movement is drawn largely from ballet vocabulary, and Pickett chooses well.

BROAD STREET REVIEW
Ballet X: Female Choreographers
BY: Jim Rutter 07.26.2008
The choice of music can make all the difference in a dance production (though some choreographers, like Merce Cunningham, might disagree). Helen Pickett hired her brother-in-law, Bernd Sippel, to compose an original piece for her work, Union.

    An eerie, haunting series of piano keystrokes repeat through the first movement (before building to a stunning intensity later), mirroring the sense of emergence in the dancing of Keating and Francis Veyette, in which many slow individual movements progress into a very aggressive and controlling lover’s tango…

    Unlike the mixed signals couples pass back and forth every weekend on dates, in Union body language became a far more precise form of communication, as Pickett sublimated aggression into seduction and made a stranglehold into a flirtatious gesture…

    Stylistically, Pickett’s work stayed more in the ballet tradition than Ochoa’s or Cox’s while still displaying forceful, fast, athletic and occasionally very graceful movements.  Her ensembles danced far more explosively and flirtatiously— most noticeably in Wagner’s eyes darting in over-the-shoulder glances. But the last movement, danced by the full ensemble, created moments of distraction that detracted from Pickett’s otherwise visually exciting patterns: As four dancers moved in tandem, another broke off to execute a different movement.  Rather than extend the theme of dissonance within harmony that she had established in the first two sections, Pickett distorted it. 

    Ultimately, the “union” of the title referred more to the synthesis of the music and the choreography than to any aspect of the dancing. When the pace increases, these dancers’ movements quicken, lashing outward in bursts and leaps.  The painter Vassily Kandinsky said he heard tones when seeing a color.  Pickett’s Union made me see movements.  

The Hub Review
SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 2008
By Thomas Garvey

Talkin' 'bout their Generation

But the surprise of the evening of the evening was up-and-coming choreographer Helen Pickett. Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen bet big on Pickett, giving her a large contingent of dancers, including his top soloists, and she delivered, with the wonderful Eventide , a strange and wonderful concoction exquisitely poised between (what used to be called) "East" and "West."

The Hub Review
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2008
By Thomas Garvey

Well, perhaps that's a bit unfair. The Globe 's Karen Campbell (once her review finally appeared) did write that the evening's risks "paid off nicely, not just for the art form, but for audiences as well." But alas, she then rated the program precisely backwards, giving the highest marks to the charming chamber piece by Sabrina Matthews, and the lowest grade to the big, thrilling new works from Jorma Elo and Helen Pickett.

There was no question, however, that Helen Pickett had opened her own department with Eventide , a big, broad, brilliant work (with the fiercely sinuous John Lam, above) that marked a huge step up from the accomplished Etesian . This time around, Pickett conjured a kind of globalized divertissement backed by an Indian-inspired (that's dot, not feather) soundtrack from Michael Nyman, Jan Garbarek and Philip Glass. The results played like Tchaikovsky-gone-Bollywood, or something the Sleeping Beauty might have watched before marrying Merce Cunningham in Bangalore. The results were also, I might add, dazzling; Pickett's control of space and scale were superb, and her variations simultaneously highly formal, lightly erotic, and slightly bemused. True, the piece awkwardly changed gears, and lost a bit of focus, in its duet-heavy middle section, but nevertheless regathered its energy for a truly stunning finale before a glittering chunk of Abstract Expressionism (neatly pulling one more avant-garde strand into the mix). My final impression was of a dance smartly poised between a dozen or more influences, schools and ideas, with a sense of the history behind each.

THEATRICS
Boston Ballet's 'Next Generation'
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2008
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL The Phoenix

Helen Pickett kneaded the classical line into sinuous curves and sexy seductions in Eventid e, a formal dance for five women, five men, and a female ensemble of 10. Three musical selections by contemporary composers (Michael Nyman, Jan Garbarek, and Philip Glass) drew on Indian and Indonesian sounds as well as the driving pulse of post-minimalism.

Eventide began in some hermetic, exotic locale, perhaps a harem, with an electric guitar rummaging through ideas you might hear on an Indian sitar, extravagant red swags hanging at the sides, and a line of women along the edge of the stage. Wearing little besides panels of silvery fabric, the women face away from the audience to where Kathleen Breen Combes seems to be getting ready to entertain a male suitor. I wasn't sure whom she danced with, but as soon as the first man left, the other four appeared ceremoniously. The ballet continued as an extended exposition of its resources and hierarchies.

The principal men and women dance alone and in combinations that get remixed before you grow too attached to them. The corps women reassemble prettily around them. The setting changes twice -- the red drapes disappear and the background goes black, then a large busy abstract painting drops down.

By the time Glass's music starts to play ( Meetings along the Edge , a rewrite of the last part of Glass's score for Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room , with a pseudo-Bach line running over the top of it), the dancer forces begin collecting into a quite conventional ballet wind-up. I never did decide where or when all this was supposed to be taking place. Fortunately, I guess, the audience wasn't let in on Pickett's baffling list of sources, which included Edward Hopper and e.e. cummings.

NEW YORK TIMES
September 6, 2007
By Jennifer Dunning

Megan Wiiliams nearly stole the show with the stunningly honed physicality of her dancing in Helen Pickett's new "One Captured Kiss."

ARTS JOURNAL New York
September 13, 2007
By Lori Ortiz

Helen Pickett's impressive "One Captured Kiss" is performed b Megan Williams to Tom Waits. Aside from Pickett's engaging choreography, William' body is articulated from head to toe. With little drama, her concise dance touches us directly, like Waits.

THE COURIER-JOURNAL Louisville, Kentucky
November 3, 2007
By Andrew Adler

upon your held-put hand "...a significant choreographer in the United States, Pickett displays a keen sense of how to leverage a dancer's complete resources...her ideas spill out in such eager velocity."

Dance Magazine
25 to Watch
January 2007 Issue
By Theodore Bale

When Helen Pickett isn't in the studio working on a new ballet, she's reading about mirror neurons and sense perceptions, or philosopher Immanuel Kant. Her approach to choreography focuses on working with one's own sensory information to explore the infinite possibilities of human movement. Pickett's style often includes improvisation. Her Etesian, which premiered last year at Boston Ballet, merged formal classical technique with wild distortions of classical movement--a dancer in arabesque might continue to pull the hip further and further off balance until an entirely new shape emerges.

After more than a decade with Ballett Frankfurt under William Forsythe, Pickett returned to the U.S. to teach workshops based on his improvisation methods, kinesiology, Brain Gym (a system that uses movement to strengthen the brain's neural pathways) and traditional Chinese medicine. Last year she created Amaranthine for The Sacramento Ballet and Trio in White for The Washington Ballet, both set to Beethoven's piano music. This year, in addition to choreographing for Boston Ballet and guesting with The Royal Ballet of Flanders, she will star in a European film by Laura Elena Cordero. "My character is a former dancer who lives and choreographs in Prague," says Pickett, "so I don't have to pretend much!"

POINTE Magazine
September 2006
By Jim Carnes

"Sacramento Ballet ended the 2005-06 season with another installment of Modern Masters, a series of new works by what company Co-Artistic Director Ron Cunningham calls "the next generation of master choreographers."
...The program ended with Helen Pickett's Amaranthine, to selected movements from three Beethoven piano sonatas. Pickett danced with William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt and recently completed a major commission for Boston Ballet. Like the flower that never fades and gives the dance its title, Amaranthine was a classic and timeless piece celebrating the beauty of the human body and its movement. The work emphasized extension - arms and legs were outstretched repeatedly - and a high degree of pointe work. Despite the complexity of its leaps and spins and lifts, it was simply beautiful."

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 12, 2006
Ballet's '7 x 7' a lucky number for women
By Jean Battey Lewis

This current "7 x 7," as good if not better as The Washington Ballet's past "7 x 7s," makes a case that women's recognition as choreographers is long overdue.
Miss Jimenez, the lone woman in "Trio in White," gave a compelling, beautifully seamless performance in the high-energy role. At the work's premiere Thursday evening she was supported with equal intensity by Jonathan Jordan and Jared Nelson.
"Trio," to a Beethoven score, was by Helen Pickett whose breathless, demanding moves reflected her years dancing in Germany to William Forsythe's starkly modern choreography.

"Trio in White," by Helen Pickett, is ballerina Michelle Jimenez's final performance with the company before she heads off in late August for the Dutch National Ballet. The lone woman, flanked by Jonathan Jordan and Jared Nelson, Jimenez found expressive depth in Pickett's steel-girded shapes, flexed joints and forced arches. Jordan and Nelson maneuvered and manipulated their foil, but this ballet was about woman, and woman's power, evident in the way Jimenez would implant her pointe shoe sturdily in the floor or insinuate her torso into a sensuous S-curve before her leg arose into a dagger-like glint above her shoulder. Pickett's choreography finds similarities with that of William Forsythe, for whom she danced, but also, as well with Balanchine, particularly in the trio configuration. The white of the title, by the way, referred not to the sleek burgundy practice attire, but to the studio's clean, white décor

Sizing Up 7x7: Another Fine Fit
By Alexandra Tomalonis
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, June 10, 2006; Page C02

Jimenez's beautiful lines and sweet intensity were shown to advantage in Pickett's "Trio in White."

DANCE REVIEW; `Grand' start falters
THEODORE BALE. Boston Herald. March 17, 2006

The world premiere of Helen Pickett's "Etesian" opened the show on an elegant and introspective note. When one sees a detailed solo phrase as long and varied as the opening melody of Bach's "Goldberg Variations," it's evident the choreographer is full of innovation. Sudden unison phrases interrupt duets and improvisations, music from Bach and Beethoven drifts in and out, and the result is both emphatic and ethereal. What’s more important than in the finished dance is the process Pickett used to generate it, which represents a worthy development of William Forsythe’s improvisational strategies. This choreographer relies more on thorough investigation than inspiration, and it will be exciting to see what she does next.

Danse Europe, May 2006
Jonelle Wilkinson Seitz views a Grand Slam in Boston
The evening opened with Etesian, a premiere by Helen Pickett, the multi-tasking (she’s also a teacher and actress) alumna of San Francisco Ballet. The ballet began and ended in silence, with a lone woman on stage. As the silence alternated with bits of Bach and Beethoven, four men and four women moved in and out of solos and groups. Costumes by Charles Heightchew and Pickett were both modern and romantic, with the women in bare legs and sea-foam-colored leotards with simple, gauzy tops. The décor (tow wide ribbons of luminescent fabric hung vertically from flies to stage floor) and lighting by Karim Badwan created an almost underwater mood onstage. Ballet –based choreography, with women in pointe shoes and lots of big ronds de jambe, was cut with small, tight movements. The piece was danced fully by all. As she is jut beginning to choreograph for ballet companies (she has upcoming engagements with Washington Ballet and Sacramento Ballet), Pickett is certainly one to watch.

INNEWSWEEKLY
Alan Helms, March 21, 2006

First up was the world premiere of “Etesian” by Helen Pickett, a protégé of William Forsythe whose choreography is mercifully more audience-friendly than his. Kathleen Breene Combes began the piece dancing silently in movements alternately balletic and loopy, as if parts of her body were behaving independently. As the piece progressed, the dancers kept shoving their knees out of the way or pushing their chins back into position. You’d think such eccentric movements would war with those of classical ballet, but Pickett wed them seamlessly into a piece whose overall feel was beautifully lyrical. This is Pickett’s first commission, yet she’s already an impressive artist.