Review: Subtle Moments on the Roof “Anna Sperber confronts the space, and the audience, with no anxieties. She propels herself between the audience rows with swift turns and swipes, bending the space into a funnel for attention. The venue is big, but the dance is bigger….a well-placed moment of silence can bring wonder back to the audience.” — Noa Weiss, October, 2021 | The Brooklyn Rail Read full review here
Review: Anna Sperber's Mysteries Remain Intact
"a pleasure to watch...wonderfully strange...The world that Anna Sperber—performer and choreographer—inhabits onstage is not yours or mine. It’s private: a mystery to outsiders from first to last. Yet she makes it immediately compelling."
-- Alastair Macaulay, March 22, 2018 I The New York Times
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Making space sing: Anna Sperber at The Chocolate Factory
"Sperber's enigmatic, repetitive actions bring attention to the margins of the space and gather stillness and silence there like a gift. You might notice the difference this makes and think: Have I ever looked at performance space--or a performance--in quite this way?"
-- Eva Yaa Asantewaa, March 29, 2018 I InfiniteBody
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"...there’s something promising in the setup for Wealth from the Salt Seas, which has the choreographer whipping weighty electrical cables into waves. It sounds like a badass ribbon dance."
-- March 20, 2018 I The New Yorker
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Review: ‘Prize’ Puts Dance and Drumming in the Spotlight
"But most of the work’s thrills are kinetic. Solos, especially for the terrific Emma Judkins, meet Mr. Sawyer’s percussion with an invigorating combination of spinning, space-eating motion and the detail of shimmies and shakes. Hitches and hiccups complicate the choreography without sacrificing momentum. Elsewhere, the dance plays against the drums with stillness and calm."
-- Brian Seibert, June 5, 2016 I The New York Times
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Movement Realized: Anna Sperber's PRIZE
"An intricately woven musing on the intersection between nature and design, the piece emphasizes the act of seeing in dance. Through orchestrated concentration, Sperber creates innovative imaging that unearths disposition."
-- Lori Degolyer, July 11, 2016 I The Brooklyn Rail
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Birds in Flight
"After the broad strokes, brilliant colors, powerful leaps and so many extended solos, their connection was gentle and intimate, and what may have been ruptured now seemed quite healed."
-- Martha Sherman, June 10, 2015 I Dance View Times
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Celestial Bodies, Searching for Orbit – Anna Sperber’s “Ruptured Horizon” at Gibney Dance Center
"Sperber and her cast construct a piece that is both at one with nature and fiercely independent, discovering a habitat all their own."
-- Katherine Bergstrom, June 22, 2015 I Point of Contact
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A Dance Shaped By Light
"Each of these moments teases out tensions and attractions among the dancers. It also teases out the degree to which each dancer — really, each character — is unsettled in his or her body."
-- Erica Getto, June 11, 2015 I Hyperallergic
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Review: Anna Sperber Plays With Light, Movement and Architecture in ‘Ruptured Horizon’
"a powerful introduction to this foursome that exudes a steely sense of grandeur and mystery"
-- Gia Kourlas, June 4, 2015 I New York Times
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ANNA SPERBER’S “RUPTURED HORIZON” AT GIBNEY DANCE
"she [Rebecca Warner] managed to be at once academic in her precision and wild in her attack of the material."
-- Meg Weeks, June 10, 2015 I Culturebot
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American Dance Festival students walk in Anna Sperber’s organic Footprints
-- Araceli Cruz, July 15, 2015 I INDY Week
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"With its heady mix of lyricism and rigor, Ms. Sperber’s work is worth watching at any stage of development."
—Sibhon Burke, June 20, 2014 I New York Times
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OPEN HOUSE, Sperber Premieres a new Quartet
"Anna Sperber, a mover and shaker in the burgeoning Brooklyn scene and a maker of powerful, sensual dance s...explores the work of bodies in time, letting us see up close enduring patterns of strength and aggression: the sheer beauty of the laboring figure, without drama or ornamentation."
—Elizabeth Zimmer, June 18, 2014 I Village Voice
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Side by Side by Audience—Anna Sperber’s ‘Superseded Third,’ at Chocolate Factory
"quiet strength and long line enrich movements... with equal parts power and vulnerability"
—Gia Kourlas, April 29, 2013 I The New York Times
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"The ... choreography was rigorous yet understated and repetitive, and the work’s overall aesthetic sophistication simultaneously texturized and softened its compositional formalism... The two women were regal, powerful, and feminine, but not caricatured or affected. And despite the squarely abstract quality of the piece, nor were they dehumanized or stripped of agency."
—Meg Weeks, May 11, 2013 I Gibney Dance Blog
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Interview: Talking with Anna Sperber about “The Superseded Third” at The Chocolate Factory
—Lydia Mokdessi, April 23, 2013 I CULTUREBOT
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"- a particular world of movement invention, something severe and strange, with an unmistakable point of view."
—Claudia La Rocco, February 2012 I The New York Times
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"These four dancers are powerhouses; at times, as they advanced, retreated from, advanced again on the audience, you felt your breath catching. The onslaught, both erotically charged and inexorable, seemed as if it might stretch into eternity....
It is an exciting conversation, along the lines of what it is to be severe and unhinged at the same time, to push yourself, through repetition, into the unknown."
—Claudia La Rocco, October 2011 I The New York Times
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"The work is charged with atmosphere"
—Gia Kourlas, September 2010 I The New York Times
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"Naomi is a handsome site-specific work that drills into its site on an almost cellular level... her dancers defined a territory, patrolled it, energized it, complicated it, glamorized it, ritualized it, reflected it, haunted it."
—Eva Yaa Asantewaa, September 2010 I InfiniteBody
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"Sperber’s past works have been quietly sophisticated and sensual; this collaborative work for five women promises to be another intimate feast."
—Claudia La Rocco, September 2010 I The New York Times
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"the future of the art form is in good hands... Curving thighs and wriggling fingers became sensual terrains both alien and familiar; it was play in the best sense, equal parts exploration and contemplation."
—Claudia La Rocco, January 2009 I The New York Times
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"moments of theatrical magic"
—Claudia La Rocco, October 2008 I The New York Times
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"She kept the performers, and audience, engaged in an examination of collapsing bodies and crumbling limbs for what moved beyond interminable into something bordering on ecstatic.”
—Maura Donohue, March 2007 I The Dance Insider
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“The refined music, impeccable lighting, and a gloomily suggestive set — devised by the choreographer with Jeff Larson and the lighting designer — give the whole a certain gloss. The space is used thoughtfully, and the production values are excellent.”
—Nancy Dalva, March 2007 I danceviewtimes
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"a smart bit of programming"
—Gia Kourlas, May, 2005 I The New York Times
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