MARCH 2002
Friday March
29
NEW
DIRECTIONS: The English National Ballet and the Royal Ballet have new
artistic directors. "In a few years, assuming they get what they want, the
landscape of British ballet will have changed considerably, thanks to Ross
Stretton at the Royal and Matz Skoog at ENB. But what kind of landscape is that
shaping up to be?" The Times (UK) 03/29/02
AFTER
THE STAR GOES IN: Sarah Wildor was one of the Royal Ballet's brightest stars
when she suddenly quit the company shortly after new artistic director Ross
Stretton took over the company last September. Why'd she quit? "If I'd stayed, I
would have turned into a nasty, bitter person. So instead of staying and
whingeing, I thought, I'm the only person who can make things happen for me, so
I'll take the bull by the horns. And I resigned." The
Telegraph (UK) 03/29/02
Thursday March
28
MORE
FIRINGS IN BOSTON: It didn't take newly appointed artistic director Mikko
Nissinen long to throw himself into the Boston Ballet's way of doing things.
He's firing dancers, including a couple of very popular local stars who, even
Nissinen admits, are supremely talented. There may be reasons for dismissals,
but it's hard not to view the actions as just more of the melodrama that has
plagued the company for the last several years. Boston
Herald 03/28/02
Wednesday March
27
BUILDING
BEYOND BALANCHINE: Peter Martins has led New York City Ballet since 1983,
having inherited one of the world's great dance companies. "Martins has been
reviled and admired in equal measure. You can criticise some of his changes, but
you can't deny that he has done his utmost to stir choreographic creativity and
stretch his dancers with a cornucopia of ballets: 49 for the 2001-2 season,
including six world premieres and four New York premieres. No other company has
such a large, effervescent repertoire." The
Independent (UK) 03/26/02
Tuesday March
26
CANADA'S
NEW DANCE COMPANY: It's been about 15 years since Canada's Maritime
provinces have had a dance company. Now a new professional company - the
Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada - is forming in Moncton New Brunswick. "The
dancers competed against 60 applicants from 19 countries to win their spots in
Moncton. Their reward? All the dancers share a single house, and work
eight-to-10-hour days of strenuous physical activity, for which they receive
about $500 a week, along with a pointe shoe allowance and benefits. Sound grim?
Some of them had never even seen snow before they arrived in the New Brunswick
centre, a city renowned for its sizeable annual snowfall." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/26/02
Friday March
22
THE
ROYAL'S INJURY LIST: Dancers of London's Royal Ballet are getting injured.
Is it coincidence or is there something wrong? "There has been some speculation
that dancers are being forced to pay a high price for suddenly learning a large
range of ballets imported by Ross Stretton - six months into the job, Stretton
is already facing criticism of his taste, let alone his personnel management."
The Telegraph (UK) 03/22/02
ANYWHERE YOU WANT
TO FLY: The Australian Ballet is celebrating its 40th anniversary. To
celebrate, Qantas, the national airline, has agreed to fly the company anywhere
it performs in Australia. The company has planned more than 200 performances
around Australia. The Age (Melbourne) 03/22/02
Thursday March
21
SF
BALLET CEO STEPS DOWN: "San Francisco Ballet yesterday announced that Chief
Executive Officer Arthur Jacobus will not renew his current contract and will
leave his position in one year... Jacobus, who declined to comment on his
departure, is credited with keeping San Francisco Ballet financially in the
black for the past nine years, a rare achievement in American ballet."
San Francisco Chronicle
03/21/02
Monday March
18
DANCING
ON AIR: "A growing group of choreographers in the Bay Area are liberating
dance from the ground. In recent years, these artists have been dancing on
window ledges, rooftops, clock towers, grain elevators and mountain peaks, not
to mention suspending themselves over stages. They have achieved these dramatic
feats by exploiting rock-climbing gear, by creating new hanging devices to dance
on and by pioneering new ways of moving." San Jose Mercury News 03/17/02
Sunday March
17
TOUGH TIMES FOR TEXAS
BALLET: The Fort Worth Dallas Ballet is in trouble - dancers have been laid
off, the season has been cut, and it's not at all clear who will be the
company's next artistic director. Remaining dancers have staged a benefit to try
to keep the company going. Fort Worth Star-Telegram 03/14/02
ALL DANCE IS NOT
(RE)CREATED EQUAL: "A work created yesterday is put onstage differently from
one reconstructed from pictures and written material. How a ballet is staged may
affect what you actually see. A repertory staple, performed continually, carries
its own authority; a reconstruction may not deliver total authenticity but still
satisfy as an approximation of a lost work." The New
York Times 03/17/02
Thursday March
14
BOSTON
BALLET FINALLY GETS SOME LEADERSHIP: "Valerie Wilder, a long-serving and
valued manager with the National Ballet of Canada, is leaving Toronto to become
executive director of Boston Ballet. Both companies are expected to make an
official announcement today. Wilder will work in partnership with Boston
Ballet's incoming artistic director, Mikko Nissinen. Nissinen is also leaving
Canada to take up his new post; he is currently finishing a four-year stint as
artistic director of Alberta Ballet." National Post
(Canada) 03/14/02
MILWAUKEE
BALLET SHAKEUP: In a major restructuring, "Milwaukee Ballet announced
Tuesday that executive director Christine Harris and artistic director Simon Dow
will not renew their contracts with the company. Harris and Dow are viewed as
instrumental in turning the once-struggling ballet company around. Harris joined
the company in 1997 and was key in eliminating the Ballet's heavy debt burden
and getting the company back on sound financial footing. Ticket sales continue
to increase each year and subscriptions are up 13 percent over the year
before." Milwuakee Business
Journal 03/13/02
SHOWTIME
FOR SHOES: Few things are as personal (or essential) to a dancer as her
shoes. "Ballet shoes are as individual as false teeth. Even the humblest student
is offered half sizes and four width fittings (XXX, XX, X and the super-elegant
"USA narrow"). Professional dancers are pickier still and their shoes will be
made to their individual specifications. Tiny, all-important differences in the
height of the vamp, the length and thickness of sole and insole, the width and
hardness of the block are all docketed on a little pink slip." The Telegraph (UK)
03/14/02
Tuesday March
12
GOTTA DANCE: What is it about Quebec that has
produced so many good (and unique) dance companies? The province has little in
the way of dance tradition, but has produced modern companies with distinctive
personalities. Perhaps "Quebecois’ need to express themselves to the wider world
may have prompted an unusually high proportion of artists to utilise the
language of dance." The Scotsman
03/12/02
Monday March
11
DANCING
TO THE MUSIC: There are choreographers who don't care much about music in
their work. Then there's Mark Morris. Morris' work is so wrapped up in music
that at times it seems that he cares more about sound than movement. Then again,
the movement is so intensely musical...(BTW, is Morris phasing himself out of
dancing?) The New Yorker
03/11/02
Sunday March
10
A
ROOM OF THEIR OWN: Mark Morris' new company studio complex in Brooklyn seems
luxurious (Morris has a whirlpool in his office so he can sit in the tub while
he's takling meetings, and the company's changing rooms "rival the ones at
Yankee Stadium"). But ''The building isn't luxurious,'' Morris insists. ''It
just has everything we need. It only seems fancy because other American dance
troupes, except for the big ballet companies, have nothing like it.''
Boston Globe 03/10/02
APPRECIATING THE
LESS-THAN-PERFECT: "Classical ballet has to a large extent remained the
province of perfection, at least in New York City. Jobs are hard to come by for
dancers who do not have the properly slender, elongated bodies." But who's to
say that "flawed" bodies can't be wonderfully expressive? "The loud-and-proud
presence of imperfection on the dance stage can be unnerving, and certainly
seems to be giving the self- appointed guardians of the imperfect a new lease on
life." The New York Times
03/10/02
DANCE - A
TRADITION OF POVERTY: To be a classical dancer in Cambodia is to live in
poverty. Even dancers at the Royal University of Fine Arts - "for everyone who
performs and teaches here, art and poverty go hand in hand. Almost penniless,
the dance school can barely afford to pay them, and many live second lives as
shop assistants, market vendors, seamstresses and motorcycle-taxi drivers." The New York Times
03/09/02
BEATING
UP THE PIT BAND: "It is widely held that ballet music is inferior to opera
music, that the orchestra rarely plays its best for ballet, and that ballet
music attracts the dimmer, less expensive conductors." But maybe that's the
perception because of the way ballet scores are conducted.
The Telegraph (UK)
03/10/02
Friday March
8
NEW
MOVES: Ross Stretton's brief time as head of London's Royal Ballet has been
rough. "He has been taunted by the British critics, but enjoys much support from
the Royal Opera House board, and their new executive director, Tony Hall, eager
to attract younger audiences enthused - they hope - by Stretton's repertoire
choices. At least that's the plan." But Stretton's modern repertoire "will mean
the birth of a new age for the Royal Ballet, whose 70-plus years' heritage drags
behind it like Marley's chain, or is its raison d'etre, depending on your point
of view." The Age
(Melbourne) 03/08/02
Thursday March
7
TALL
TALES OF DANCE: Last week Yana Booth was crowned Miss Great Britain 2002.
Her real training though was almost two decades as the only British dancer at
the Bolshoi Ballet school. So why isn't she dancing? She's tall. "In the ballet
world Yana - six-foot tall and a curvy 36-26-36 - stands as much chance of
making it as Barry White. Even the fact that her Bolshoi studies were sponsored
by the film star Sharon Stone hasn't eased her plight. 'When I graduated I wrote
to every dance company in Europe. Most of them saw my measurements on the CV and
didn't even call me in for an audition. I was desperate'."
The Telegraph (UK) 03/07/02
Sunday March 3
A
CONTEMPORARY TRADITION: A dance festival in Limmerick, Ireland draws dancers
from all over the world, presenting a variety of traditions. One of the pressing
issues is the tension between tradition and innovation - "We need to create a
contemporary culture out of tradition. What do I need from the past and the
present to make my future?" Irish Times 03/02/02
EVERYONE
LOVES A GOOD STORY: Story ballets once ruled the dance stage. Then came
Balanchine and a long period of abstract dance. But "the rising popularity of
story ballets suggests the pendulum of popular taste may be swinging back. The
difference now is that we live in an age dominated by film and television.
Yesterday's sets and costumes can't do the eye-seducing job they once did."
Toronto Star 03/02/02
DANCING TO THE
SINGING: A number of dance companies have recently taken up operas as
subjects for dance. "Given the dramatic and musical vitality of great operas and
the way the performing arts can borrow from one another, it is no surprise that
choreographers venture into operatic subject matter. Yet making ballets out of
operas — turning dramas expressed through song into dramas based on movement —
requires solving challenging theatrical problems." The New York Times
03/03/02
Friday March 1
ANYTHING
FOR A CROWD: Moscow's Russian Imperial Ballet was created eight years ago.
Its programs are "constructed on the foolproof principle of trying to appeal to
the widest and least discriminating audience possible." Is this any way to build
a company? St. Petersburg
Times (Russia) 03/01/02