Dance

Sasha Waltz and Johannes Ohman had signed five-year contracts to lead the young ballet company (that was, in 2004, created as a consolidation of three opera ballets), but the protests against their tenures started early. Still, they hung in there for a while. “They aimed for a balance of classical tradition and modern dance. In the joint statement announcing their departure, they said that they believed their mission had been a success, citing healthy attendance figures and an honor from the magazine Tanz, which surveyed 25 dance journalists and named the Staatsballett its company of the year for 2019.” – The New York Times

“Researchers at InsuranceProviders.com analyzed data from the Occupational Information Network, a national organization developed through support from the U.S. Department of Labor …, to determine the 20 most physically demanding jobs in the country. They analyzed the level of strength, stamina, flexibility and coordination required for a host of jobs, and each category was assigned.” Dancer tops the list with 97 points out of 100. (Athlete came in third.) – Dance Magazine

Michelle Herman: “In that very first class, long before I had any idea what I was doing, … I had a moment of what seemed like perfect clarity: My body and my mind were working as one. And this was something I had no experience of. During the brief periods of my life when I’ve exercised — when I’ve taken up swimming or aerobics or yoga — I had always turned off my mind in order to attend to my body. That was why it was fun (when it was fun), and I wanted it to be fun — how else could I get through it? But I saw, that first day in the dance studio, that it was the work of ballet that appealed to me — the mental work, I mean.” – Slate

“According to a company press release [about the two artistic directors], Öhman is leaving to accept a directorship at Swedish contemporary dance presenter Dansens Hus. Waltz” — whose appointment was greeted with fury by the company’s dancers (though they later patched things up) — “has chosen to depart at the same time rather than become sole artistic director, though she will continue to be artistically involved with the company through 2021 as a choreographer.” – Dance Magazine

Commercial dancers — the performers who animate music videos, films and TV shows — have long needed the right look, the right connections, expertise in the most popular styles and an agency to access coveted jobs. Now, however, video and social media have democratized who can succeed in the industry. – Los Angeles Times

The company’s labor action is yet another part of the series of national protests against President Macron’s planned pension reforms. The twist is that, as we know, ballet is not like other professions (dancers’ bodies won’t hold out until age 65), and the Paris Opera Ballet’s pension system dates back to the 17th century. – Dance Magazine

The fired-then-reinstated New York City Ballet principal was a figure in the company’s recent #MeToo scandal (and accompanying lawsuit). While City Ballet’s dancers and the company of West Side Story seem willing (at least publicly) to let Ramasar redeem himself, a number of others — including lawsuit plaintiff Alexandra Waterbury — are calling on audience members to boo him until the producers fire him from the show. – The Guardian

“There’s a massive hole,” producer Lyndsay Magid Aviner said of the lack of urban dance on New York stages. Coming from the circus world, the Aviners said they believe there’s a broad audience for physical storytelling. Justin Peck’s popular 2017 work “The Times Are Racing” for New York City Ballet, danced in sneakers, convinced them that audiences would embrace the kind of work the Madrids are doing. Taking a cue from movement-based hits like “Blue Man Group,” “Stomp” and “Fuerza Bruta,” the Aviners went the for-profit route. They said they raised $200,000 for the San Diego run, then held their breath. – The New York Times

“Rianto, is a master of the Lengger Lanang, a traditional [Javanese] dance performed by men dressed as women. But Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, has seen rising intolerance in recent years towards the LBGT community. And there are fears it could affect this traditional art form.” (video) – BBC

The sessions, attended by leaders from New York City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and Charlotte Ballet, were held in conjunction with this past weekend’s conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance. Reporter Ellen Dunkel sat in. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Studying how people move to music is a powerful tool for researchers looking to understand how and why music affects us the way it does. Over the last few years, researchers at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have used motion capture technology—the same kind used in Hollywood—to learn that your dance moves say a lot about you, such as how extroverted or neurotic you are, what mood you happen to be in, and even how much you empathize with other people. – Phys.org

Marinela Nuñez: “When I’m dancing, I always think – even when I am in a fairytale ballet such as The Sleeping Beauty – that it is real. It touches me and it makes me think of my life; it should have that impact when you’re watching. Some people always say that ballet is elitist and it’s definitely not. It is this beautiful piece of art, unfolding live in front of you, not like something in a museum.” – The Observer (UK)

It’s the annual conference of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, which was started 32 years ago by Philadanco founder-director Joan Roberts Brown. “In the mid-1980s, she started cold-calling every dance company she could identify with the word ‘Black’ in its title, to see if they were interested in getting together to talk about the challenges they faced running African-American dance companies. ‘I thought it would be six ladies in my kitchen,’ said Brown. ‘Sixty people showed up.'” This year’s attendance figure: 1,100. – WHYY (Philadelphia)

“‘He has coherently brought classical African dance into conversation with all that is contemporary,’ said [South African dance scholar] Jay Pather, … long-established practices of Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho people, ‘rituals and codes that are highly complex and have been passed on in highly sophisticated ways.’ Mr. Maqoma, who is of Xhosa descent, doesn’t deconstruct these rituals and codes. He uses them to tell contemporary stories.” – The New York Times

Virginia Johnson, a founding member of Dance Theater of Harlem who was named artistic director in 2009, said the gift would go toward increasing the size of the company from 18 to 20 dancers, supplementing the organization’s lean staff and further encouraging the development of works by women and people of color. – The New York Times

When the choreographer and her company debuted Bluebeard. While Listening to a Tape Recording of Béla Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”, audiences who’d never seen anything like it did not respond well, but the mixture of dance, spoken theater, stop-and-start music, and male-on-female violence became emblematic of Bausch’s style. But Bluebeard had been out of the repertory since 1994, and with Bausch having died a decade ago, no one was sure it could be revived. Brian Seibert reports on how the work was reconstructed. – The New York Times

On Saturday, officials announced that the government would withdraw, at least temporarily, a plan that would have raised the full-benefit retirement age, now 62 for many workers, to 64 for all professions. The Paris Opera Ballet’s dancers currently stop working at 42, then receive monthly payments equal to 45 to 48 percent of their top salaries. – The New York Times

“French-born Nederlands Dans Theater alumnus Medhi Walerski has been named the troupe’s artistic director, starting officially in July 2020. … [He] replaces longtime artistic director Emily Molnar, who is taking the helm of the critically acclaimed NDT after the end of this season. She has steered Ballet BC for a decade, helping to bring it out of a financial crisis and taking it to a world stage, where it has won acclaim on tours to Europe and the U.S.” – The Georgia Straight (Vancouver)

“I imagine that Cunningham came to understand not only the value of this kind of in-depth documentation, but the independent strength of the photographs as well. The elemental vitality and spirit of these images will forever celebrate Merce Cunningham’s groundbreaking work, to which he devoted his heart, mind, and body.” – New York Review of Books

“Whether Jo is tackling Amy for a most grievous sisterly infraction or the sisters are tumbling over each other to get ready for a party, Gerwig keeps the sisters in constant, surging motion. That energy explodes in the film’s dance scenes, which happen in sweaty, crowded beer halls, proper Paris ballrooms and even on a snow-covered porch. For the swirling dance sequences, Gerwig and her cast got a big choreographic hand from San Diego’s Flannery Gregg.” – Los Angeles Times

Who better to portray godlike aliens, aerial crime-stoppers and lethally elegant badasses than dancers? Dance training is excellent preparation for the bodily toll of action films and long days on the set. Perfectionism, physical presence, a taste for adrenaline — these attributes are par for the course for dancers. – Washington Post

“While not every 6-year-old is ready to sit through Swan Lake, some enterprising troupes are adding kid-friendly performances to court the same audiences who buy Nutcracker tickets.” Rebecca Ritzel looks at three of those enterprising troupes. – Dance Magazine

“[Lyndsey Winship] talked to dancers and choreographers [Shobana Jeyasingh, Céline Gittens, and Final Bow for Yellowface co-founders Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin] about ballet’s slow pace of change, which problematic ballets should be thrown out and which ones could be creatively reimagined.” – The Guardian

Yuan Yuan Tan wasn’t even intending to join the company back in 1995, but no principal dancer in the history of the company has lasted as long. – San Francisco Chronicle

Pugh founded Ballet Memphis in 1986 with two dancers and a $75,000 budget. The organization grew over the years and now has a company of 21 dancers and a four-million-dollar budget. It also performs a full season in Memphis and tours nationally and internationally. – The Commercial Appeal

Some of these developments are already underway (dealing with ballet’s ethnic stereotypes, more varied colors in ostensibly skin-tone dancewear, more women running companies, the tap revival), some are always to be hoped for (concentrating on health), but a couple might not be so obvious. – Dance Magazine

Gina Gibney’s ever-expanding organization already operates two buildings (which include five theaters, 23 studios, a conference room and a media lab), a six-member dance company, and several performance-and-social-justice projects. Now a $2 million grant will support doubling the number of company dancers, forming what Ms. Gibney hopes will become a troupe on the lines of Nederlands Dans Theater and Ballet BC. – The New York Times

“Paris Opera has lost more than 12 million euros ($13.3 million) in a month-long strike by ballet dancers fighting to cling onto pension rights that date back to [King] Louis XIV. … While the opera has seen plenty of strikes by stagehands, it is almost unheard of to have dancers downing tutus. Their decision to take to the streets for the first time in the opera’s 350-year existence made international headlines.” – Yahoo! (AFP)

It’s true that dance history is particularly hard to preserve, and the desire to stay true to a choreographer’s original intention when restaging their work is a valid one. But treating these works like museum pieces can backfire. In the effort to stay painstakingly authentic to an original artist’s work, are we missing some of the spark that made it so exciting when it premiered, and losing the element that made it a classic in the first place? Are we preventing these works from resonating with new audiences? – Dance Magazine

Two 24-year-old monks have founded a breakdancing troupe that, they think, may bring Buddhism to other young people. “Break dancing has spread around the world due to its nature of getting everyone — regardless of race, age or gender — excited. … The duo came to think that Buddhist teachings and dancing share the same philosophy of peace and equality.” – Toronto Star (The Japan News)