PRESS
"What Does It Feel Like to Kill Someone?" Review by Heather Desaulniers
June 11, 2011
Not often, but every once in a while, a dance piece transforms the artistic field, adding value to and changing its genre. There is a sense that you have borne witness to something extraordinary and that dance is not the same and will not be the same because of the work's existence. Twyla Tharp's "Deuce Coupe" fused ballet and modern together; Bill T. Jones' "Still/Here" created on-going dialogue between artists and critics; and now, we have Mary Carbonara's "What Does It Feel Like to Kill Someone?" which streamlines dance theater to its core and essence. Carbonara's incredible narrative journey represents what modern dance theater should be - no frills; no gimmicks; no peripheral elements, just pure choreographic brilliance.
Mary Carbonara asks, 'What Does It Feel Like'
June 8, 2011
From the title of her new dance, "What Does It Feel Like to Kill Someone," you might surmise that Mary Carbonara does not take a choreographer's job frivolously. The work, which runs through Saturday at Yannis Adoniou's recently opened studio-performance space at the foot of San Francisco Civic Center, marks Carbonara's return to large-scale dances after a four-year hiatus devoted to raising her two children.
Everyone can have a seat at Carbonara's 'Beggar's Table'
June 10, 2005
"The Beggar's Table," Mary Carbonara's premiere for her company's fourth home season at ODC Theater, is a more eloquent, better focused accompaniment to her ambitious 2004 "Deflecting Faith," also on this weekend's program. Incorporating some of the movement motifs of the earlier work, "The Beggar's Table," for seven dancers, extends Carbonara's exploration of what it means to be human.
'Deflecting Faith' sets ultimate human mystery to dance / High-concept, high-caliber performance
June 12, 2004
Faith is an evasive enough subject to talk about, much less dance, with full complexity: How to capture both mystery and revelation, abstract investigation and flesh-and-blood experience? Yet Mary Carbonara has done it, beautifully, in her new full-length show "Deflecting Faith," which opened Thursday and has its final performance tonight at ODC Theater.