If this Denishawn program had a highlight, it would have been the next dance, Waltz/Liebestraum, which premiered in 1922 in Virginia, but was reportedly initially inspired by St. Denis's spontaneous dancing at a party to the Brahms waltz that was being played. … Dakin delivered the exquisite performance that the piece required. There's something about her performance, still, that's a combination of purity, conviction, invention, and joy, that's as fresh now as it was when I first saw her dance with Graham in the 1970s and 80s. If there's another opportunity to see her perform in just about anything, I'd encourage one to do so.
Jerry Hochman, CriticalDance
Christine Dakin and Margie Gillis are both riveting. They ride the rapids of a woman's thoughts and feelings with exacting, navigational skill. Jaime Blanc choreographed Short Story (2017) for Dakin, as inspired by Tennessee Williams' Lady of Larkspur Lotion, with all her lies, promises, and delusions, cleverly set to Luciano Beria's Sequenza II.
Deirdre Towers, Impressions, Dance-Enthusiast, May 22, 2023
The artistry was abundant. This perfectly paced concert included Christine Dakin's awe-inspiring, chilling character portrayal in Short Story by Jaime Blanc.
William Whitener, Dance Enthusiast, May 6, 2023
Dakin's portrayal of a contorted, anguished woman who appears haunted by … something, and is determined to maintain her grip on whatever she apparently sees through her mind's eye, was a knockout.
Jerry Hochman: CriticalDance, April, 2023
The Sokolow Ensemble brings the Graham company star Christine Dakin into the role of Kahlo (both Sokolow and Dakin had their own connections to Mexico and dance companies there). From the beginning scene with Diego Rivera (Luis Gabriel Zaragosa), Dakin's fierce yet introspective interactions with her artist-husband — minimal, a glance, a longer gaze, a calibrated walk to or from — is utterly magnetic. I thought of a matador interlaced with a bull.
Jonathan Stein — thINKingDANCE — September 12, 2022
Christine Dakin, former Artistic Director and longtime principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, gave me the chills while performing Waltz/Liebestraum, choreographed by St. Denis in 1922. From her first glance at pianist Jonathan Howard Katz, she exuded an immediacy, a femininity, a carefree embrace of rhythm and grace. While today's self-helpers tell you, "You are enough!", in the Denishawn era, celebrating an essence was not only enough — it was everything. The virtuosity comes through in her musicality and heartfelt performance.
Deirdre Towers — Dance Enthusiast, October 13, 2021
Jamie Blanc's "Short Story" (2017), the most successful of the newer works, had no sugar coating either, as Christine Dakin, a former Graham dancer, encapsulated the anguish of a woman in the middle of a mental breakdown, remembering the happiness of her youth. (It seemed to evoke one of Tennessee Williams' fragile heroines, and indeed, when I checked the program after the performance, it was inspired by Williams' one-act play, "The Lady of Larkspur Lotion".) Dakin was phenomenal, with her faded elegance mingling with a raw and unsentimental power.
Mary Cargill — danceviewtimes — June 1, 2018
For breaking the mold in carrying the torch, a Sustained Achievement against all odds of legend, time and backstage sturm und drang in inheriting and re-imagining the defining passions and furious mythic women of Martha Graham, a performing life and mission steered dazzlingly close to the flame.
David R. White, Director Dance Theater Workshop
Some materials conduct electricity better than others. This is why we use expensive copper wires and not iron. Perhaps some dancers' nerves conduct electricity better, too. That would explain the extreme coordination that distinguishes the greatest dancers, making their every gesture exceptionally deft and clear. Though no longer young, Christine Dakin, a former star of the Martha Graham Dance Company, still moves without friction — a quality that makes her dancing vital and immediate. Knowing how to eliminate unnecessary movement is an acquired skill, and this savvy veteran does possess an ergonomic technique. Yet more important is the inborn potential for movement visible in every twitch of her muscles. Watching Dakin move is among the greatest pleasures of Buglisi's Requiem,...
Robert Johnson, The Star-Ledger, Feb 8, 2013
What lingers in the mind after an evening of superlative dancing by the Martha Graham Dance Company is Christine Dakin's terrifying portrayal of Medea in Cave of the Heart. Dakin's technical control enables superhuman contortions that convey, more graphically than many great actresses, the chilling madness of the vengeful sorceress of Greek legend. Dakin is not only a superb dancer, she is a consummate actress as well. The inspired Graham choreography is reinforced by the equally inspired set by Isamu Noguchi, a great sculptor whose forms are uniquely suited to Graham's starkly bold concepts. As Jason, Donlin Foreman was the essence of the dominant male, strutting as he glories in the adoring embrace of his girlish new bride.
Florence Fisher — Sarasota Herald-Tribune
She epitomizes as few others have done the passion and technique of Martha Graham's own performance.
Francis Mason — Ballet Review
It was Ms. Dakin's triumph to make her character's catharsis our own: the gradual release of her pent-up fury over the evening sustained a stunning and original interpretation.
Anna Kisselgoff — New York Times
Martha Graham's Cave of the Heart, a turbulent haiku of a dance drawn from the legend of the Greek princess Medea, contains a juicy dream of a role for strong female dancers who can act.
Christine Dakin seized her chance on Thursday night when the Martha Graham Dance Company presented the piece, which is set to a score by Samuel Barber that is as powerful as the dance itself.
Ms. Dakin is one of those performers who allows herself to become possessed by a character, but who never loses control. Ruthless evil seemed to seep from every pore of her nervously sinuous body, whether she was an active antagonist or simply watching covertly from behind Medea's golden tree. To meet her gaze as she watches the young princess who has taken her place as the wife of Jason is to feel the thrust of a madwoman's knife. In this stunning portrayal, Medea is a mad beauty who can be imagined as an avid, dutiful consort in not too distant years.
Jennifer Dunning — New York Times
... danced with an animal ferocity that was frightening and a human vulnerability that was deeply touching.
Joseph Mazo — N.Y. Daily News
Deep Song (1937), to a score by Henry Cowell, was inspired by the Spanish Civil War. The uncredited set and Graham's costume are as stark as the music: a long white bench and a white dress with slashes of black as jagged as the thrusting limbs of a dancer who represents the Spanish people in the abstract.
As made clear by Christine Dakin in a stunning role debut, the solo cries out, rears back from fate and nearly dies with an arching passion comparable to the flamenco cante jondo. The bench becomes a grave and then a support for her lean, exhausted back until the woman sinks against it, this time bowing over it in a last, weak gesture of defiance.
Jennifer Dunning — New York Times
Dark Meadow, made in 1946, is also a work of great clarity and simplicity, whether one reads it as a dance about the cycle of the seasons or of life, or as being about a woman's creative or sexual awakening. And all of that was glowingly reflected in a role debut by Christine Dakin as The One Who Seeks, originally danced by Miss Graham. Miss Dakin is bold and clear as she first journeys across the dance's richly symbolic landscape. She may not know exactly what she seeks, but she is a seeker without a trace of hesitancy. Throughout, she seems to embody the music, composed by Carlos Chavez. Here, she has all the directness of the plangent melodic line. The One Who Seeks changes subtly as Miss Dakin comes into contact with She of the Ground, danced by Thea Nerissa Barnes, and He Who Summons, danced by Donlin Foreman. Grave and distant, Miss Barnes looks like a slender, jutting tree as she moves across the stage. Mr. Foreman is a burly, sometimes sensuous icon of a man. Over the course of her encounters with them, Miss Dakin loses a little of the character's innocence but none of her luminousness, which gives her the quality of a young Celtic queen. As she blossoms, so does the sere landscape.
Miss Dakin is at her most powerful in her solo with the black cloth, but in general this is a performance of great, though modulated, passion. It is also a performance that suggests Miss Dakin is both at home with the role and will continue to develop it.
Jennifer Dunning — New York Times
Christine Dakin exposes every nerve in Hecuba (Cortege of Eagles) with consummate control and sensitivity shifting subtly from rage to horror and finally, to pathetic near-madness. There is even a moment of humor, when Hecuba encounters the suffocating smugness of Helen.
Anna Kisselgoff — New York Times
Her performance as the Chosen One is startling and totally magnetic... so touching, it will take forever to erase her vivid images from memory.
Jennie Schulman — Backstage
Everything that's eternal about the Graham oeuvre was vividly on display Friday night... Seeking federal funds to preserve Graham's work, the company once tried to have Congress declare the choreographer a living national treasure. It may be time to start a similar campaign on behalf of Donlin Foreman and Christine Dakin, the Husbandman and Bride in Appalachian Spring, set to Aaron Copland's score that was originally titled Ballet for Martha. Together, Foreman and Dakin embody a world of shifting and conflicting impulses and emotions. Their frontier world is new to them, but so are they new to each other. The possibilities are prismatic, and Graham found every one of them to array them before us. When Dakin moves, you see a character of many parts, presented to the audience from the front, the side, the back; there's that optimism of the little taps she gives her own shoulders, the fear of the halting moves with her new husband.
Janice Berman — Newsday
thINKingDANCE — Jonathan Stein — September 12, 2022
danceviewtimes — Mary Cargill — June 01, 2018
Harvard Gazette — Corydon Ireland — Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Washington Post — Sarah Kaufman — Sunday, December 27, 2009
Harvard Gazette — Emily T. Simon — Thursday, April 9, 2009
Village Voice — Deborah Jowitt — Tuesday, Apr 5 2005
The New York Sun — Aeron Kopriv — Mon April 11, 2005
Interview — Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower — May 6, 2004
New York Times — Kathryn Shattuck — Sun 1/19/2003
ExploreDance.com — Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower — February 1, 2003
Village Voice — Deborah Jowitt — May 28, 2002
New York Times — Jennifer Dunning — 10/25/1989
New York Times — Jennifer Dunning — 10/15/1989