Dance

Peter Kalivas says his PGK Dance Project, begun 25 years ago while he was working as a professional dancer in Munich, “must always be attempting to resolve the three main barriers the professional arts constantly face: affordability, accessibility and relevance.” – San Diego Union-Tribune

That desire for usefulness has always been a knotty issue for performance art, since it is often both accessible (live and affordable) and inaccessible (challenging and unfamiliar). Intimacy and ritual seem to be buzzwords in the poetry and art world at the moment. – Times Literary Supplement

A Q&A with Gia Kourlas “about examining his religious upbringing, performing the dances of a postmodern master while choreographing his own works and developing a close-knit dance family.” – The New York Times

“Welcome to POB’s annual ‘concours de promotion,’ or competitive promotional exam. In a company that employs 154 dancers, it is the only way to climb the ranks. Outsiders are often baffled by this system because it is so different from how other companies promote their dancers. This year, Pointe was invited to take an inside look at this high-stakes event and spoke with two of the 14 dancers awarded promotions that go into effect in January 2020.” – Pointe Magazine

Dancers who are already stars in their field, like American Ballet Theatre principal dancers Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside, have had their photos liked, commented on, and reposted by A-listers like Jennifer Garner and Sarah Jessica Parker. And today, SJP’s simple “like” carries far more cultural cachet than if she were, say, to catch a matinee performance of Giselle. Why? Because that appearance on SJP’s personal feed means that some Sex and the City fan (or, if you’d rather, The Family Stone fan), who has never seen so much as a pirouette, is suddenly introduced to the art form, with a trusted endorsement to boot. – The Observer

Khmer dance has ancient Buddhist, Hindu, and animist roots – and though it’s mostly performed by all female groups today, it used to be performed both by men and by women. Now, Prumsodun Ok wants to revive the male dances and to provide a means of expression for gay dancers. – BBC

This seems like a pretty solid idea for a company that has a lot of young women involved. And, of course, “earlier this week the duke announced he would be not be undertaking public duties ‘for the foreseeable future,’ following a widely criticised television interview about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” – The Stage (UK)

American companies have been looking hard at this problem in the past few years, especially in the annual cash cow that is Nutcracker. With ballet becoming ever more internationalized — “a performance in Moscow can be beamed to a cinema in Massachusetts” — Lyndsey Winship has a look at how dancers and choreographers in London, Paris, Moscow, and Monte Carlo are approaching the issue, from Nutcracker to the Indian temple of La Bayadère and the Ottoman pirate ship of Le Corsaire to the blackface Moor in Petrushka. – The Guardian

“As soon as James Griffin gets off the school bus he tells his mom, ‘Go dance, go dance.’ James is 14 and has autism, and his speech is limited. He’s a participant in a program for children on the autism spectrum at the University of Delaware that is studying how dance affects behavior and verbal, social and motor skills.” – The New York Times

Ntozake Shange didn’t write the role of the Lady in Purple in her “choreopoem” for a deaf performer, but she happily approved casting Alexandria Wailes in the current New York revival. Gia Kourlas talks with Wailes about integrating American Sign Language with choreographed movement and how dancing has helped her communicate all her life. – The New York Times

After all, argues Courtney Escoyne (reacting to news of a second Polunin documentary), it only encourages him. “I’m not sure that it matters what stance this documentary takes. It’s yet another vehicle for him to receive exactly what he wants: attention. At this point, that’s not something I believe we owe him.” – Dance Magazine

That’s right, the Colorado Ballet has turned to crowdfunding to get new Nutcracker costumes; the old ones were created for the San Francisco Ballet in 1986, and Colorado Ballet bought them in 2005. “For years, the team has done what it can to try to maintain the set and costumes, using vodka to try to extract the sweat from the costumes and glue and tape to keep some of the props together.” – Denver7

Offstage, she was a dumpy little frump of a Midwestern girl who lived openly with her mother and her female lover. Onstage, she was “la fée éléctricité,” who manipulated with sewn-in rods a gown made of massive lengths of white silk to create natural images and fantastical shapes under rotating colored spotlights — an act that made her a huge celebrity for decades. – The Public Domain Review

“‘Keep your fingers straight and off the trigger. Do not point the rifle at anyone you do not intend to shoot.’ That’s Roman Baca, a U.S. marine and Iraq War veteran. But he’s not speaking to the company of soldiers he led during his tour as a sergeant in Fallujah, Iraq. Here, Baca is instructing a company of ballet dancers” in the documentary short Exit 12: Moved by War. (video) – The Atlantic

“It could be a dream or a nightmare. You’re 84. What would it be like to have an artistic conversation with your 30-year-old self? [Rainer] is finding that out as she reconstructs, in collaboration with Emily Coates, Parts of Some Sextets, which she created in 1965 for 10 performers and 12 mattresses. A complex braiding of movement, text and, yes, mattresses, it builds an invigorating labyrinth of choreographic activity.” – The New York Times

“I learned that the dancer inside me doesn’t care about this wheelchair. She just wanted to find a way to keep dancing. I think I’m living the life I was born to live. That was an accident, this is a choice.” WWL-TV (New Orleans)

The violence, the hopelessness and the misery in the slums of Rio de Janeiro are all a direct result of the lack of guidance, role models or future prospects — except drug trafficking — for young people. That’s why the 31-year-old Daiana began offering young girls an alternative: a ballet school in the favela. – Der Spiegel

Seventy-five years ago, in a San Francisco busy with Naval activity in the middle of WWII, the San Francisco Ballet staged the first full-length Nutcracker in the U.S. The snow is still falling – but there’s a lot more of it now than there was in 1944, when 16 white-clad ballet corps members danced with sparkler-style sticks around the stage. – San Francisco Chronicle

In a lot of Asian countries, “hip-hop rose to popularity as a form of self-expression and resistance, sometimes in the face of colonialism and oppressive regimes.” But current Asian American hip hop groups are all about finding each other, and finding community. – Noisey

Colin Dunne doesn’t wear the Celtic-ized costumes or hold his torso and arms rigid; he frequently dances in sneakers or barefoot; he sometimes improvises, which is almost unheard-of in traditional Irish dance. And in his newest show, he’s collaborating with a dead fiddler who was even more nonconformist than he is. – The New York Times

“Countless dancers find themselves at a crossroads when they question whether they still love dance, whether the sacrifices are worth it or whether a professional career is truly what they want — or truly possible. We spoke with three dancers who faced this crucial turning point and achieved the right balance of ballet in their lives.” – Pointe Magazine

Gia Kourlas: “He had a different partner this week because his regular one, Lindsay Arnold, had a death in her family. It didn’t make his dancing better or worse. It remains consistent in its awfulness.” – The New York Times

“Often when I work with directors, or when I’m directing myself, what you think at the beginning often changes. That’s fair and normal. But with this show [American Utopia], the ideas David first presented me with have not changed. … I’ve worked with him for so long that I can literally get in his body.” – Vulture

“I was never ashamed of being a sissy, and I wore the bullying as a badge of honor,” he writes. “I knew what was going on and I knew who I was, so I took care of myself by being funny. Nevertheless, every solo I made up in the first part of my career was a humiliation dance in one way or another.” – Washington Post