” ACB Dance Company literally transforms the environment around you. Creating a space where movement, music, and mood meet. Lifelong dance connoisseurs and the uninitiated will find an ACB performance equally captivating. This should not be missed.”
— Peter Cobb; Program Officer, New York Foundation for the Arts
on ACCUSED (VARIATION B)
“Alison Cook Beatty whips up a savory feast for the eyes in ACCUSED (VARATION B) Wildly mercurial and yet tender and pensive. The train of women that coil in a serpentine like manner via bouree is reminiscent of Nacho Duato’s style and intricacies of corps de ballet in a very” visceral and modern way. However, her experience with Paul Taylor is also present with signature Taylor leaps and bounds. But most surprising is her Balanchinian way of avoiding sentimentality and creating a work that unlike most choreographers may stand the test of time. Truly a feast for the eyes and not to be missed by any lover of dance.”
— Matthew Cole, Director, Sculpt New York LLC
on PATIENCE IMPATIENCE
“Later in the afternoon, I dropped in to see Alison Cook Beatty rehearsing her trio PATIENCE IMPATIENCE with Columbia Ballet Collaborative dancers Holly Curran, Abby Ryckman, and Rachel Shafran. Ms Beatty fills the stage with a weights and ropes to create what resembles a giant game of cat’s cradle, and as the dancers are alternately tethered and released from this spiderweb, there’s an important subtext of frustrated womanhood. Aided by composer Avner Finberg’s abstract score, the work often evokes the spirit of the mid-century American modern masters.”
— Katherine Bergstrom, dance scholar & writer at Point of Contact (http://ptofcontact.com/2014/11/12/710/)
on HOUSTON STREET HOOTENANNY
“Broadway meet Milford”. On August 24,2014 dance talent landed on the Milford Fine Arts stage and left a lasting impression. Milford native Alison Cook Beatty and her dance company enthralled the audience, young and old, with her dance interpretation of timeless stories. Her company is adept at movement, but more than that, at transporting the audience with their acting as their whole bodies envelop the roles they are playing. Come back to Milford, ACB, —New York shouldn’t have all the fun and talent.
Alison Cook Beatty and her dance company brought back the ‘60s with an amazing Houston Street Hootenany. Selecting just six pieces of music from the enormous body of work in that era , she and her company of dancers–with pitch perfect moves–conjured up the anger, joy and hope of that era. As one who lived through it, I can only marvel that such a young woman could understand that era at such a level to be able to translate it so effectively. I felt transported by her choreography and awed by her story of how she came to put this marvelous piece together. Her unique ability is to explain those years in ways words never could.
Dance is acting without words. If that is true and I think it is, then Alison Cook Beatty and her company deserve an Academy Award for their performance on August 24 in Milford. Her small company was cast as hippies and fairies and sisters and lovers who experience love and loss and joy Her work as expressed by her and her dancers is perfectly curated to provide a range from ballet to modern jazz (need to give me words here) but unlike many dance performances, her dancers inhabit their characters and they need no words to tell their stories, letting their movement do it instead.
If you want an evening of sheer joy, take in a performance of the Alison Cook Beatty dance company. Storytelling is at its best as her dancers convey love, loss, anger and joy through inspired choreography. I guarantee you will leave exhilarated and wanting more.
— Maureen Gorman
