“‘We all need to take a deep breath,’ says Jim Mitchell, the ballet’s fourth executive director in three years. During that time, the leadership was in flux and the organization was left homeless after a mold infestation shut down its headquarters in the former Orlando Utilities Commission building.”
An experimental program at Manhattan’s New Victory Theater has been presenting to youngsters – for free – three weeks of wide-ranging modern dance programming, with the companies doing the same material they perform for adult audiences. The dancers seem to love it even more than the kids do.
“Cheered by tourists, tolerated by regulars, feared by those who frown upon kicks in the face, subway dancers have unwittingly found themselves a top priority for the New York Police Department – a curious collision of a Giuliani-era policing approach, a Bloomberg-age dance craze and a new administration that has cast the mostly school-age entertainers as fresh-face avatars of urban disorder.”
“As assistant to Tomasson, to whom he will report directly, Stowell will have his fingers in just about every aspect of the company pie on both the artistic and administrative (read financial) sides.”
Alastair Macaulay: “It was hard not to think of politics when watching the Bolshoi’s repertory – which was entirely pre-glasnost. Seeing the tedious mix of Swan Lake (in Yuri Grigorovich’s dismal production), Don Quixote (in Alexei Fadeyechev’s version) and Spartacus (all Grigorovich and all hokum) was to feel the clock turned back 40 years.”
For Cincinnati’s Lumenocity celebration, a choreographer and two dancers from Cincinnati Ballet create a work to be digitized and projected onto the (enormous and ornate) face of the city’s Music Hall.
“If yoga and pilates are now standard, with classes from gyms to chilly church halls, ballet – which has a level of technique so punishing that only a tiny chosen few will actually succeed – is perfect for fashion. It’s inherently elitist in its quest for physical perfection.”
They include “closely coaching the dancers, touring more, giving outdoor public performances, organizing outreach programs with schools, and bringing in new choreographers. He listed Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor, Justin Peck, and Liam Scarlett as possibilities. He also wants to reassure his dancers and artistic staff.”
“Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don’t know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists.”
“I am not interested in sporting diamond tiaras on stage, or having my point shoes cooked and eaten by my fans. Ballet has evolved and the ballerina figure with it. … There is simply no reason, nor time, to perpetuate century-old clichés, such as the remote, semi-divine figure of the 19th-century ballet star.”
“If you’ve seen a movie in the last 20 years, chances are you know the choreographer Marguerite Derricks’s work, if not her name. Austin Powers’s epic go-go dance through the streets? Ms. Derricks’s idea. Abigail Breslin’s climactic strip routine in Little Miss Sunshine? Ms. Derricks was just off camera, encouraging Ms. Breslin to claw like a tiger. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s tango in Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Well, Ms. Derricks was Ms. Jolie’s first partner.”
The 38-year-old Spaniard, a former star at ABT, “is slated to start part-time in September, then full-time in January.” Earlier this year he announced that he would close his company in Barcelona and leave Spain.
“North Korea has asked China to stop the spread of a video clip lampooning leader Kim Jong-un. … [The DPRK government] feels the clip, which shows Kim dancing and Kung-Fu fighting [with various world leaders], ‘seriously compromises Kim’s dignity and authority’. Beijing was unable to oblige.” (includes video)
“Melbourne-based artist Atlanta Eke has taken out the inaugural Keir Choreographic award , the first major national prize of its kind in Australia.” (includes video of all four finalists)
The provincial English town of Milton Keynes is known for a long stand of arching trees planted to roughly match the footprint of Norwich Cathedral. Choreographer Rosemary Lee writes about creating Under the Vaulted Sky, a site-specific dance for the spot. (includes video)
“It’s always a pleasure to see Cunningham choreography these days. No choreography is a keener tonic to the dancegoer’s palate, and what once felt difficult now looks both absorbing and natural.”
“The audience was in ‘the hole’ when the siren went off about 9:15. They evacuated to the safe room downstairs in the costume department, as did the dancers. We sat. The atmosphere was both rational (what are the chances of a rockets hitting right here?) and fearful (what if?), experienced and fresh, trying to keep the morale positive and alert; selfies were taken….We heard a few loud booms outside, presumably the iron dome intercepting the projectiles, and the sirens stopped.”
“If you were looking for evidence of how EDM has taken over America, and Las Vegas in particular, you wouldn’t necessarily need to go to Hakkasan. You could just drive from the airport to the strip and look at how many of the giant billboards now advertise not legendary singers or magicians or entertainers, but DJs.”
“For the past three years, since he made headlines by becoming the first American — and first foreigner — to be named a principal dancer at the storied Bolshoi Ballet, Hallberg, a blond, elegant dancer from the American heartland, has lived what he calls two separate lives — his American life, in New York, and his Russian life, in Moscow.”
You get passinho, “a street dance born in Rio’s shantytowns that has broken through social divides to captivate Brazilians from all walks of life and win international attention.”
“The English National Ballet is planning a move to a major new home, which it hopes will help it create a ‘powerhouse in the dance world’. The company … wants to sell the lease on its current cramped premises in Kensington and join the English National Ballet School at a new London site.”
Mallakhamb – performed atop a pole, hanging from a rope, or hanging from a pole suspended by a rope – developed in the 11th century in the highlands surrounding what is now Mumbai, where it’s still taught and practiced today.
“Long headquartered outside of the city, the company has settled into its new home at Boardwalk Hall, with all the dancers living close by in two big houses. The company will dance regularly at the Claridge, on the Boardwalk at Kennedy Plaza, and in a series of ‘Up Close and Personal’ performances inside its new ballet studio.” Company founder/director Phyllis Papa talks about the company’s past and future.
The Kempsey-Fagg brothers of Birmingham – Oscar, aged 11; Marlo, 9; and Arlie, 6 – were all recruited by a Birmingham Royal Ballet outreach and education program for particularly promising young people. And they’ve got ready answers for anyone who might tease them about it.
“Boys don’t want to go in a class with girls where they end up being the only boy in the ballet class.”
“Our footwork certainly wasn’t ballet-grade, but each stride, dip and turn eased the tension and hinted at the skeleton of a more complex work of choreography crafted by the Dutch National Ballet.”
“The proposal came after complaints some mixed-sex dancers were ‘unfairly disadvantaged’ in competitions against all-male couples who are physically stronger.”
Gina Gibney has a singular opportunity to cultivate a new generation of audience members and artists. “Dance has just been in a downward spiral,” she says. “I can’t change that, but I do want to create a space … where things get better.” A modest proposal, but the response to Ms. Gibney’s new center will nonetheless foretell contemporary dance’s chance for survival.
Joan Acocella: “Glover is the greatest tap virtuoso of our time, perhaps of all time. … And, perhaps for that reason – that he never had to woo us – Glover had a problem with charm: namely, that he didn’t show much. … He not only didn’t smile; often he wouldn’t look at the audience. He did the show while watching his shoes or the band. And the fact that the people he wasn’t looking at were mostly white made the whole situation more edgy. We went there to love him, and he wouldn’t love us back, or even like us.”
“The British Dance Council is to consider proposals that would define a dance partnership as having to consist between a man and “a lady” on 21 July, just before a major competition in Bournemouth. If it is passed, it will ban same-sex couples from mainstream contests, regulating them to same-sex-only categories.”