|
JUNE 200O
Friday June 30
BALLERINA
BACKLASH: Deborah Bull, a principal dancer with London’s Royal Ballet, has
publicly criticized the controversial new book “The Student Dancer” and pulled
out of her planned involvement in its launch. The result of a 15-year study, the
book claims young dancers are mentally and physically damaged by their intensive
training and are commonly pressured to become anorexic. The Independent
06/30/00
Thursday June
29
-
POINTED
CRITICISM: A new 15-year study in Britain finds that training for
ballet dancers not only damages young dancers by pressuring them to become
anorexic, but produces "incredibly emotionally immature youngsters who are ill
equipped to cope with the complexities of life beyond their narrow, rarefied
existence. Low self-esteem is rife in a milieu where no tutors are required to
undergo training, and teaching is often archaic." The Guardian 06/29/00
Wednesday June
28
-
BRITISH CONDUCTOR ANDREA QUINN,
former director of London’s Royal Ballet, will take over as music director of
New York City Ballet in August 2001.
New
York Times 06/28/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
Tuesday June 27
-
GOING FOR
THE...OH WELL: The winners of the New York International Ballet Competition
are announced. Actually, there was no big winner (no gold medal was awarded),
but... New York Times 06/27/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
-
THE
STATE OF A LEGEND: The Bolshoi Ballet has been selling out and winning raves
on its current tour, reinforcing its stories place in the ballet world. "Every
large performing arts center in the nation will no doubt shortly be calling
Moscow to ask about 2002, and there's plenty of new repertory to choose
from. However, the six Pavilion performances raised major questions about the
current artistic level of the Bolshoi and, in particular, the quality of its
coaching." Los Angeles Times
06/27/00
Sunday June 25
Thursday June
22
-
POPPING WHEELIES: Is there something
odd about dancing in a wheel chair? "When you think about it, theatrical dancing
is a pretty odd thing all by itself, remaking and deploying the body in ways it
wouldn't intuitively go. Physical comics, mimes, acrobats, masks, and surrealism
have always been at home on the dance stage - along with, more recently, flying
bodies, moonwalkers, and okay, wheelchairs. All these exaggerations and
ultra-specializations of human behavior can enrich that peculiar ability dance
has to superimpose the imaginary on the real before our very eyes." Boston Phoenix
06/22/00
Monday June 19
-
MORRIS
MAJOR: Mark Morris Dance Group celebrates its 20th anniversary
next year. Still as flamboyant and opinionated as ever, Morris is one of the
most sought after choreographers in the business and continues to churn out
dazzling new dances. “Over the years his choreography has changed along with his
taste in music. In the beginning it was provocative but playful, howling with a
homosexual humour and sticking two fingers up at the more ascetic work of his
contemporaries. Later, that sense of fun was allied to [his] talent for making
jubilantly musical dance that could be as profound as it was frisky.”
London Times 06/19/00
Sunday June 18
-
NINA
BALLERINA: Nina Ananiashvili is taking the US by storm on the Bolshoi's
current tour. After years of fighting for her artistic freedom, she's now trying
to juggle her "insane" perfectionism with a busy international
career.
Los Angeles Times 06/18/00
-
DANCING
ON EDGE: Just what do arts competitions really prove anyway? This week the
New York International Ballet Competition begins. "All dance competitions have a
paradox at their core: on one hand, the dancers struggle to 'do it right,' to
understand what is expected of them, and on the other, the judges hope to find
dancers who will deliver the unexpected within a formally controlled
context."
New
York Times 06/18/00 (one-time registration required for
entry)
Wednesday June
14
-
HOMAGE
TO A CLASSIC:
The Kirov Ballet has meticulously
restored "Sleeping Beauty" to as near to the original as possible. "In an age
when the old ballets are mugged, de-natured, crippled, how wonderful to see a
company which believes that the past, albeit another country, is worth visiting
and respecting rather than guying and abusing." Financial Times 06/14/00
-
ALL THE
CHOREOGRAPHY IN ONE PLACE: Every two years the Canadian Dance Festival
gathers up the best in Canadian dance and puts it on display in once place.
Toronto
Globe and Mail 06/14/00
Sunday June 11
-
PRIMARY
SOURCES: The great Kirov Ballet has put on its detective hat to
recreate the long-lost original "Sleeping Beauty." "We will see almost every
step as Tsar Alexander III saw it in 1890, almost every detail that the
brilliant Marius Petipa choreographed to Tchaikovsky's extraordinary music, and
every design as the ballet's ambitious originator, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, drew it."
The Telegraph (London)
06/11/00
-
SHOW
BIZ SLEEPING BEAUTY:
The English National Ballet is underfunded,
says its director. So he puts on a show, the critics be damned. "On our
Australian tour of Swan Lake last year, our smallest audience a night was 7,800
and our largest was 11,000 - 11,000 Australians, sporty people, who stood on
their feet and roared. When I'm looking at that, I don't care what anybody says.
If the productions were naff, the dancing substandard, the costumes tacky, I'd
mind. But this is the highest quality you can find." The
Sunday Times (London) 06/11/00
-
THE
GREATEST DANCER OF OUR ERA? For nearly the last 15 years of his ballet
career, Rudolf Nureyev "did everything possible to destroy his reputation,
dancing too often, too badly, eventually too unwatchably to be anything more
than classical ballet's grimmest joke. And yet, surprisingly, almost impossibly,
his artistic rehabilitation is now in full swing, fed by new evidence that, if
not the greatest dancer of our era, he may well have been the most original and
influential." Los Angeles Times
06/11/00
Friday June 9
-
DANCE
COMPANY FOLDS: The demise of Budapest's Szeged National Theater’s
internationally acclaimed contemporary ballet ensemble has fueled concerns over
the future of the arts in Hungary. Budapest Sun 06/09/00
-
LOOKING
FOR LOVE: Sizing up the search for a new artistic director for Boston
Ballet. Boston Herald
06/09/00
-
AUSTRALIA BALLET CONTENDERS: Since Australian Ballet artistic director Ross Stretton announced
his departure, the company has been accepting applications to fill his
place. Two hopeful in-house candidates have already turned in their CV's: one, a
principal dancer, and the other, the ballet master. Sydney Morning Herald
06/09/00
Thursday June 8
Monday June 5
Sunday June 4
-
DANCE
COMPANY TAKES A YEAR OFF: Dance Connecticut, the one-year-old company
founded out of the ashes of Hartford Ballet, surprises everyone and announces it
will take a year off. The company - which had a well-received first season -
will use the year to plan for the future, organizers say. Hartford Courant
06/04/00
-
AND
THE LATEST STAR ON BROADWAY? Dance. All the best shows gotta have it these
days. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
06/04/00
Friday June 2
Thursday June 1
|
|
|
|
|