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MAY 200O
Wednesday May
31
BEHIND THE MARTHA
GRAHAM CLOSURE: On the one hand, Ron Protas owns the rights to Martha
Graham's works. On the other hand, the dance company doesn't want this
non-dancer as its artistic director any more. Stalemate. New York Post
05/31/00
Tuesday May 30
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OUT OF
ONE CRISIS AND INTO... For now, its much-talked-about merger with the
Scottish Opera on hold, the Scottish Ballet looks for ways to reinvent. For one
thing, it's got some ground to go before truly laying claim to being a national
company. And yet, how to get there with limited resources... Glasgow Herald 05/30/00
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DANCE
AS THE BIG SHOW: The English National Ballet was Princess Diana's favorite
company. Since her death, the company has employed some "sometimes dubious
tricks" to promote its Albert Hall productions. Its controversial director
thinks "British ballerinas are pear-shaped and that ballet should be Albert
Hall-shaped, with casts of hundreds and audiences of thousands."
The Telegraph (London)
05/30/00
Monday May 29
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INVESTMENT
IN DANCE: Australia Ballet gets $1 million extra from the government to hire
ten new dancers and continue its national touring program. Without additional
government money, the company had said it would "retreat" from its present
program of touring and choreographic innovation, following last year's $665,000
deficit. The Age (Melbourne)
05/29/00
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BASIC
RENEWAL: As the Martha Graham Company goes out of business, another
company has come along to renew the legacy. "The young company Buglisi/Foreman
Dance (this is its fifth season) renews the Graham technique in all its
full-bodied glory. Everything is here: those potent torsos, contracting,
releasing, spiraling; legs, arms and heads alert to every surge of
emotion. New York Times 05/29/00
(one-time registration required for
entry)
Sunday May 28
- COMING
TO AMERICA: The Bolshoi Ballet may not be all that it once was, but getting
it to America for a tour is still an enormous undertaking. Chicago Tribune 05/28/00
- CARMEN
AS CAR MAN: Matthew Bourne's choreographic re-imagining of the "Carmen"
story in a 1960s midwestern American town where cars rule is a bit of a stretch
- but it works.
Sunday Times (London)
05/28/00
- FUTURE
GREATS: Peter Martins' direction of New York City Ballet has been dissected
in detail - but he has also wrought influence on the company's blue chip school.
New York Times 05/28/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
- OUT
IN THE PROVINCES: Terry Teachout travels to Raleigh and has a revelation:
"Sit down, dance buffs, because I've got news for you: The best full-evening
story ballets of the past quarter-century are currently being choreographed
right here in the Barbecue Belt by Robert Weiss, artistic director of Carolina
Ballet." Washington Post 05/28/00
Saturday May 27
- "BUT IT'S MY
LIFE" Dancers of the Martha Graham Dance Company are stunned by the
suddenness of the company closing last week. New York Times 05/27/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
- TOO MUCH
DEBT:
"We were presented with the figures of
what it would take, in terms of financial support, to continue on and we found
that we could not be fair to people [we employed] and go forward. The company
and school are closed down and we hope it is temporary." Los Angeles Times
05/26/00
Friday May 26
- MARTHA
GRAHAM COMPANY TO CLOSE: Citing major financial difficulties, trustees of
the Martha Graham Dance Company have voted to shut down the company. "They
haven't raised the money to go on," said Graham Center board member Ron Protas,
Graham's heir and head of the trust that owns all of her
choreography. Washington Post 05/26/00
Thursday May 25
- CHAOS
AT OHIO BALLET: Only three of Ohio Ballet's 19 dancers have signed contracts
for next season, and dancers are protesting their rookie artistic director's
handling of the company. "All the dancers of Ohio Ballet made a pact to walk out
if Jeffrey Graham Hughes continued as artistic director. None of the dancers
signed their contracts for next season in hopes that the board would have the
best interest of the company in mind."
Cleveland Plain Dealer 05/25/00
Tuesday May 23
- TEST
OF TRADITION: The Bolshoi Ballet and Opera are struggling with their own
survival. "A crumbling building, mixed critical reviews and shaky finances
plague the renowned ballet and opera company as its members rehearse for a tour
of the United States." The Age
(Melbourne) (AP) 05/23/00
- REBUILDING
A COUNTRY: How do you rebuild after the war? With dance. "Chechens are a
people of great artistry. Through dance they strive to express their anger,
their pain, their love of peace."
New York Times
05/23/00 (one-time registration required for
entry)
- REEL
DANCE: Australia hosts its first festival devoted to dance movies. Just one
question though - how do you define what's a dance movie? Sydney Morning Herald 05/23/00
Sunday May 21
- DANCING
ON EDGE: Dance Theater of Harlem's Arthur Mitchell and New York City
Ballet's Peter Martins, Balanchine progeny both, talk about the challenges of
directing dance companies in modern times. New York Times 05/21/00 (one-time registration
required for entry)
- LOW
POINTE: Washington DC's Kennedy Center says it runs one of the best dance
series in the country. "But over the past several years the ballet program has
sunk to an alarming depth. The number of subscribers plummeted more than 40
percent between the '91-92 season and last year." Despite highlights such as
Moscow's Bolshoi, audiences have had to suffer through "Dracula," a commercially
driven hit that gets high marks for boredom, and "Nutcracker on Ice," "an effort
by a troupe of lower-tier Russian skaters that probably cost the center about 89
bucks and looked it." Washington Post 05/21/00
Monday May 15
- OVERKILL:
Someone took out an ad supporting National
Ballet of Canada dancer Kimberly Glasco in her wrongful-dismissal fight against
the dance company. But the inflammatory ad says "Glasco's dismissal was not for
artistic reasons and likens it to the dismissal in 1933 of leading Jewish
artists in Nazi Germany." That's got The Canadian Jewish Congress upset.
CBC 05/15/00
Sunday May 14
- COME
DANCE WITH ME: Ballet almost never makes it to the big screen these days. So
the dance known as "Baby Baryshnikov" is happy for the new dance-centric
"Center Stage." Boston Herald
05/14/00
Friday May 12
- ELECTRO-DANCE:
There's something about movies that makes dance pop out at you. No, you can't do
some of the moves you do on a stage and make them translate. But the movie-dance
tradition is electrifying. St.
Louis Post-Dispatch 05/12/00
Wednesday May 10
- THE
NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA goes to court to argue that an arbitrator didn't
have the right to order the company to reinstate a dancer the company fired.
CBC
05/10/00
Monday May 8
- TRADITION:
The Kirov Ballet has been dancing "La Bayadère" for 123 uninterrupted
years. "The staging is blessed with design as old-fashioned and as marvelous as
the dramatics of the piece itself: the Kirov retains the meticulous scenery made
for a 1904 production, with all the magic of painted backdrops and illusionistic
perspectives, soaring palaces and abundant greenery. (The sets now in use are
scrupulous copies of the originals.) The ballet also honours something sadly
ignored in the current performance style of the 19th-century repertoire: the
power of dramatic gesture." Financial Times 05/08/00
- THE
FRENCH VERSION: Paris Opera Ballet christens new Lowry Center with its own
"Bayadere" For its first British visit in 16 years the Paris Opera Ballet
brought Rudolf Nureyev's staging of La Bayadère, the last production Nureyev
worked on before he died in early 1993. Nureyev had already given the Parisians
half a dozen stagings of the Russian classics, but this was to be his grandest
vision yet for the company. The Times (London) 05/08/00
Sunday May 7
- DEFINING
MOMENTS: It doesn't matter whether you're a small regional ballet
company or the mighty American Ballet Theater (ABT). "Swan Lake" is the classic
that sets the standard. ABT debuts its new swan, plowing every resource the
company can muster and a $1.4 million budget. New York Times 05/07/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
Saturday May 6
- BE TRUE TO ME: Unlike music or theater that can be
written down and faithfully reproduced, dance has always had the problem of
being recreated faithful to the original. "Videotaping and dance notation now
augment the age-old handing down of dances from one performer to another. But
what about differences in individual interpretation or even a choreographer's
different versions? Which should be the interpretation of record?" New York Times 05/06/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
Wednesday May 3
- WANTED: SUCCESSFUL SUCCESSOR:
Now that Ross Stretton is moving on to head up London's
Royal Ballet, what's to become of the Australian Ballet? And who should lead it?
Sydney Morning Herald 05/03/00
Tuesday May 2
- FIRST AID: The National
Dance Program gets a $6 million grant from the Doris Duke Foundation to support
dance. "To date, the National Dance Project has reached approximately 820,000
people in 41 states, and provided production grants to 65 dance projects and
touring grants to 271 presenters." Boston Globe
05/02/00
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