MARCH 2001
Friday March 30
PLAYING FAVORITES? American Ballet Theatre executive
director Louis G. Spisto has been accused, in a complaint filed by the Equal
Employment Opportunities Commission, of illegally favoring young, gay employees.
"A policy was developed to ‘disengage’ older workers in favour of younger ones,
generally male, who would not be uncomfortable with the management’s preference
and discourse of gay lifestyles." At least 30 staff members have left since
Spisto’s arrival in 1999. The Times (London)
3/30/01
Thursday March 29
NUTCRACKER
REVISITED: St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater is staging a new version of
The Nutcracker. Music director Valery Gergiyev has a new interpretation
of Tchaikovsky's music, but it's the choreography that has everyone talking.
Mikhail Shemyakin is "focusing on the darker spirit of Ernst Hoffmann's
19th-century children's tale in order to bring out more of the story's inherent
fantasy. At the end, [the little girl] rejects the adult world and chooses never
to return to reality. At the ballet's climax she turns into a sugar figure on a
giant cake." The Moscow Times (Reuters)
03/29/01
Wednesday March 28
IRELAND'S
IMPOVERISHED DANCE: In Ireland, the Arts Council has awarded £433,000 to
stage a major dance festival. Great - but even in Ireland's prosperous times,
its dance infrastructure is in need of major repairs. Irish Times 03/28/01
Tuesday March 27
REVIVING
MODERN DANCE IN PHILLY: "Less than a year after Philadelphia's modern dance
community lost its most important rehearsal space, [a prominent local dancer] is
making plans to turn a cluster of garage buildings in the Spring Garden
neighborhood into the city's first theater dedicated exclusively to modern
dance." Philadelphia Inquirer
03/27/01
Monday March 26
COMPETING
TO GET IN: "Each year, any permanent member of the Paris Opéra Ballet
wanting promotion to leading dancer, soloist or coryphée (a kind of
demi-soloist) can apply to take part in a competition created for the purpose.
More than half of them do so." The Independent
(London) 03/23/01
Sunday March 25
WHAT
WENT WRONG IN BOSTON? One of the great mysteries of the arts world is why
one discipline can thrive while another dies a lonely death in the very same
city. Yet it happens all the time, and Boston is the latest case in point. One
of America's great arts towns, full of top-quality music, fine museums, and a
famous theatre scene, it has simply never embraced dance, and several companies
are currently paying the price. Boston Globe
03/25/01
THE
GIELGUD AFFAIR: When Maina Gielgud left the Boston Ballet six months before
she was even scheduled to begin work as the embattled company's new artistic
director, accusations flew over whose fault it was, and speculation over the
"real" reason for her dismissal was rampant. The latest theory: it's (almost)
all about the money, baby. Boston Globe
03/25/01
GOING
VERTICAL: The ramrod straight perfect vertical line, the perfect split
arabesque, is one of the most beautiful positions for a ballerina. So how did it
come about? The Telegraph (London) 03/24/01
RETIREMENT IS
OVERRATED: Nearly forty years after Merce Cunningham burst onto the scene
and changed dance forever, the 81-year-old choreographer is still one of the
most innovative figures in modern dance. "The work is not and has never been
trendy or appealing to popular taste. When making a dance, Merce has never
considered what might be commercially viable." Yet somehow, Cunningham has been
embraced by the public like few other choreographers before or since.
The New York Times 03/25/01
(one-time registration required for
access)
Friday March 23
FROM THE BARRE TO THE
BOARDROOM:
Performers aren’t always the most suited to be arts administrators, but David
McAllister might be the exception. After giving his last performance at the
Sydney Opera House on Saturday, he will step into his new role as artistic
director of Australian Ballet and plans for his inaugural season already include
a new "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty", and adding 10 new dancers to the
company. "His dressing room tells the tale. On one side of the table is eye
makeup, foundation and powder. On the other is an ever-increasing stack of
business papers." Sydney Morning
Herald 3/23/01
Thursday March 22
BOSTON
BALLET BACKLASH: When the Boston Ballet unexpectedly dismissed several of
its dancers last month, and then fired the incoming artistic director who had
apparently ordered the action, the troubled company went into full defense mode,
with everyone involved desperate to blame someone else. Now, two of the
dismissed dancers paint a dismal picture of an organization where the buck stops
nowhere. Boston Herald
03/22/01
Wednesday March 21
CROUCHING DANCER,
HIDDEN WIRES: If you haven't taken Hong Kong action movies seriously, now
may be the time to start. Dance critic Joan Acocella of The New Yorker pays
particular attention to "wirework, whereby the fighters are attached to wires,
like Peter Pan, so that they can move upward as well as in the usual
directions... such feats leaven the film's violence with a sort of joy. By
producing a longer arc of action, wirework allows for longer takes--hence,
expansion, afterthoughts, fantasy." The New
Yorker 03/26/01
Sunday March 18
THE
NEW PAS DE DEUX: With the folding of Cleveland's only full-time ballet last
year, other companies have decided to take some chances in an effort to draw
crowds. Several smaller dance troupes have been reinventing the classic pas
de deux recently, replacing the traditional male-female dance of love with
duets featuring (gasp!) two male performers. The Plain
Dealer (Cleveland) 03/18/01
Thursday March 15
BOSTON
BALLET MAY BE RECOVERING: The Boston Ballet, beset by management shake-ups,
dancer turn-over, and lawsuits, may at last be settling down. One clue:
promoting Jorden Morris to chief ballet master. "I'm in the position of
basically putting a dance team together and making sure that it's a strong,
talented company. I can tell you that I will hire the best dancer for the job.
That is the bottom line." Boston Herald
03/15/01
Wednesday March 14
LOSING
ON A TECHNICALITY: The family of former Boston Ballet dancer Heidi Guenther
may appeal its loss in a wrongful death suit against the company, saying the
case was thrown out on technicalities. "What's most troubling about this anomaly
in the law is that a worker can be treated negligibly and even die, but have no
right under the workers' compensation system." Boston
Herald 03/14/01
Tuesday March 13
BALLET
LAWSUIT DISMISSED: A Massachusetts judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought
against the Boston Ballet by the mother of a former company dancer who died of
anorexia. The suit claimed that ballet officials told the young dancer she had
to lose weight to join the troupe: Heidi Guenther was 5'3", and weighed 93
pounds when she died in 1997. Nando Times (AP)
03/13/01
Monday March 12
CROCE ON DANCE: In 23
years writing about dance for the New Yorker, Arlene Croce was a strong voice.
"Unlike many dance critics covering a beat, Croce did not write to be liked, or
even to be rewarded by her employers. She wrote to be read. She could not be
predicted or controlled, and, combined with her intellectual talent and her
rhetorical genius, the result could be explosive in senses either exciting or
terrifying, depending on whether the reader is on the sidelines of the action or
the target of it." The New Republic
03/05/01
HOW MARK MORRIS
BECAME AN INSTITUTION: The choreographer and his company have a gleaming new
home in Brooklyn. But it's more than a home; it's a statement about one of the
most exciting choreographers of our time. The New
Yorker 03/12/01
Sunday March 11
THE
DANCING ATHLETES: The line between athletics and dance have blurred in
recent years. Now a group of Italian gymnasts enters the dance circle, working
with choreographers to refine their movement. The
Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 03/11/01
Friday March 9
THE PARIS OPERA BALLET ANNUAL
COMPETITION: A
lot of movement, a lot of fuss, a lot of clamor. And for what? "There was a time
when this competition gave every dancer their chance. Is it now being turned
into a beauty competition where only those resembling a stereotyped story-book
image of a prince can pass? Or must dancers grovel at the feet of a bunch of
civil servants and beg ?" Culturekiosque 03/07/01
BALLET LEGEND NINETTE DE VALOIS
DIED on Thursday
at age 102. A dancer with the Ballet Russe and then founder of the Royal Ballet,
Valois established ballet in Britain when the country had no classical dance
tradition and became a revered choreographer, teacher, and director. "Her
influence on the development of ballet in this country cannot be overstated."
BBC
3/08/01
- TRIBUTES TO VALOIS from the UK dance community. Sir
Anthony Dowell, director of the Royal Ballet described her as "one of the 20th
century's greatest and most influential figures in the world of the
arts."
BBC 3/08/01
- THE TIMES’ DANCE CRITIC REMEMBERS
VALOIS: "People
regularly spoke of Madam in hushed tones: what would she think of this ballet
and that? Who would she like? Who wouldn’t she like? I heard tales of her
fearsome authority and her strong opinions, always freely
expressed."
The Times (London)
3/09/01
RUSSIANS
DELAY RETURN OF PAVLOVA'S REMAINS: An apparent dispute between St.
Petersburg and Moscow has interrupted the return of Anna Pavlova's remains to
Russia. Her ashes, in London since the ballerina's death seventy years ago, were
to have been sent back to her native country at the request of the mayor of
Moscow; now the Russian Embassy has cancelled the request. BBC 03/08/01
Thursday March 8
BRINGING DANCE IN FROM
THE COLD: "In the sixties, modern dance, like the other arts, took a turn
toward conceptualism. Music, stories, stars - all the things that could draw you
into an illusion, make you lose yourself in the show - were banished. The result
was cleansing, but it was also a dead end." Twyla Tharp was one of those who
brought us back from all that. The New Yorker
03/05/01
MARK MORRIS' NEW
HOME: Mark Morris and his company are moving into their new home in
Brooklyn. The "sumptuous five-story, 31,000-square-foot building diagonally
across Lafayette Street from the Brooklyn Academy" cost $6.2 million and is "a
palace of modern dance, arguably the only one of its kind in the United States.
'This is unusual, and it is also historic and unprecedented'." The New York Times 03/08/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Wednesday March 7
WHAT
IS IT WITH THE BALLET PEOPLE? Last month, the Houston Ballet's artistic
director announced that he was stepping down, shocking the company's dancers and
board members. Now, after further consideration, Ben Stevenson says he will stay
on, albeit in a joint role with his former assistant. Dallas Morning News 03/07/01
Sunday March 4
THE NEW OLD
MASTERS: Choreographers Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham are the reigning
masters of dance. "Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Taylor have gone their own creative
ways, sometimes raising eyebrows. But once choreographers achieve eminence,
certain old aesthetic controversies may lose their steam." The New York Times 03/04/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Friday March 2
BOSTON
BALLET - WHO'S THE VILLAIN?: Maina Gielgud, who resigned as artistic
director of the Boston Ballet before beginning the job, is refusing to take the
rap for budget problems and the firing of nine dancers. Ballet CEO Jeffrey
Babcock, who's already developed a reputation for antagonizing company members,
appears to be on the hot seat right now. Boston
Globe 03/02/0
NOT ABOUT THE
MONEY: Gielgud denies previous reports that she quit because the company
wouldn't allocate more money. "On the contrary, all I've been asking them is to
tell me what they do have, or at least what they feel they can afford."
Sydney Morning Herald 03/02/01
Thursday March 1
PAUL TAYLOR, GOOD AS
EVER: The Paul Taylor Dance Company has a two-week season in New York every
year. This year's looks pretty good, according to the critics. In fact, it looks
great. How's this for a rave: "Taylor is quite simply the most extraordinary
choreographer alive.... it is theater burned into the stage, and, even more,
burned on the audience's imagination." New York
Post 03/01//01