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SEPTEMBER 2000
RADICAL ROMEO: Currently one of Europe’s most
celebrated choreographers, Angelin Preljocaj sees the political in the poetic
and his revisionist "Romeo and Juliet," soon to premiere in London, is no
exception. "We are plunged into a future-world in which the streets have become
war zones policed by leather-clad cybercops and Romeo doesn't just hop over
Juliet's garden wall, he first has to slit the throat of one of her machine
gun-toting bodyguards." London Times
09/29/00
Tuesday September
26
- SAUSAGE
MAKER TO SAVE BOLSHOI? "Last month, in a shocking putsch on the eve of the
fall season, the Kremlin announced it had fired the Bolshoi's director, the
legendary ballet dancer Vladimir Vasilyev, and replaced him with a team of
business-oriented managers. The coup was planned with such secrecy that Russian
journalists compared it with a KGB operation." But can the company be
saved? The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
09/26/00
- HEAVY
LIFTING: It's not so easy being a male dancer, writes one of Canada's most
famous male dancers. "Working for four hours at a stretch, without a break,
trying to get it perfect, is fine if you are the one being lifted. For the
lifter, it is not so fine. It is gruelling. Perfection, in this instance, can go
hand in hand with abuse of another human being. It is so very easy for the man
in classical ballet to feel resentful, depressed, discouraged, even vindictive,
as he fights to be a worthy partner, dancing behind the ballerina, trying to
display her at her best." Ottawa Citizen
09/26/00
Monday September
25
- LYONS GOES ASIAN:
The Lyons Dance Biennial goes Asian. "The focus is on Asia and the silk trade,
but folk material has been deliberately played down. The event is essentially a
contemporary dance festival, thankfully free of embarrassing
Orientalisms." New York Times
09/25/00 (one-time registration required for
entry)
Sunday September
24
- MENTORING
& THE ART OF CHOREOGRAPHY: Where are the mentors for today's
choreographers? Who helps midwife a dance and develop it into something
finished, something unique? Boston Herald
09/24/00
Friday September 22
Thursday September
21
-
SELL-OFF:
It's official - Cleveland San Jose Ballet shuts down and moves to liquidate its
assets to pay creditors. But not to pay season subscribers, however.
Ticket-holders will be given vouchers that they can exchange for some other
local arts events.
The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland) 09/21/00
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A
FRANCE-LOVES-JERRY-LEWIS THING? Europeans love French choreographer Maurice
Bejart's work. Not the British or Americans though. "Critics in Britain and
America say he's a poseur who trashes the values of classical music and dance
for the sake of cheap theatrical thrills." The Independent 09/17/00
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FEELING
SOMETHING: Something new is happening in dance. "The cool, formal
abstractness of body movement of the past 30 years, American in origin, is being
overtaken by a new, psychoanalytical, emotional approach from Europe, where
feelings matter more than aesthetics." The Telegraph (London) 09/21/00
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BOSTON
RENOVATION: Boston Ballet has been through some difficult times of late. But
the company is embarking on an ambitious five-year plan to boost attendance,
build an endowment and perhaps partner in the construction of a new $150 million
theatre. Boston Herald
09/21/00
Tuesday September
19
-
THE
GENIUS ECLIPSED: The revolution that was Michel Fokine - and then eclipsed.
"Before Fokine, choreographer, set designer, costumer and composer each worked
in isolation on a dance; Fokine set about bringing these arts together." The
onset of Nijinsky helped prematurely end Fokine's career at age 34.
New Statesman 09/18/00
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ONE
WAY TO DEAL WITH CONTROVERSY: Gag orders, secrecy, defensiveness. Boston
Ballet's leadership prefers to conduct its business outside the glare of public
scrutiny, writes one reporter. Boston
Herald 09/19/00
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ANOTHER
NEW DANCE COMPANY: It's taken 11 years to put it together, but former New
York City Ballet star Suzanne Farrell's new 19-member company debuted at last
week's Balanchine Festival at the Kennedy Center. "Reviews of her company have
been generally rapturous, a two-week Kennedy Center engagement is already set
for next fall, and a related tour is being planned."
Los Angeles Times 09/19/00
Sunday September 17
-
NEW DANCE COMPANY:
Cleveland San Jose Ballet company dancers vote to form a new company and
relocate to San Jose. The Cleveland San Jose company was shut down last week
after failing to raise enough money to continue. The new company will be called
Ballet San Jose of Silcon Valley and open its new season October 12. San Francisco Examiner 09/16/00
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THE OTHER ROYAL:
"Birmingham is England's second city, and the company is its second Royal
Ballet, but David Bintley plays that position to advantage. 'I like being part
of a company which — how should I put this? — which is never thought of as being
the best, because we are not the 'real' Royal Ballet at home in Covent Garden.
So we have the fun of coming from behind'." The New
York Times 09/17/00
(one-time registration required
for entry)
Friday September 15
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DREAMING
BIG: As expected, yesterday Boston Ballet named Maina Gielgud as the
company's new artistic director. The Boston troupe, said officials, also has an
ambitious new five-year plan designed to make it 'one of the five best ballet
companies in the world'."
Boston Globe 09/15/00
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RECIPE
FOR SUCCESS: "Audiences want to see stars. Like choreographers, stars are,
in the first place, born. But then they need to be developed and nurtured. They
need to be found." Boston
Herald 09/15/00
Thursday September
14
-
NEW
BOSTON BALLET DIRECTOR: Boston Ballet is to announce the name of its new
artistic director today. It is expected to be Maina Gielgud, the "controversial
former artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet and Australian Ballet. She
is also the niece of the late British actor Sir John Gielgud." Boston Herald 09/14/00
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CALIFORNIA
DREAMING: San Jose offers members of the disbanded Cleveland San Jose Ballet
a chance to "test the waters to create a new ballet company in the Silicon
Valley." To make it happen, San Jose would have to raise an additional $2
million for the first season and "a high percentage" of the current dancers
would have to sign contracts to make the plan work. Dancers have until today to
sign contracts. The Plain
Dealer (Cleveland) 09/14/00
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TWO WEEKS OF
BALANCHINE: The Kennedy Center kicked off it’s ambitious two-week Balanchine
Celebration Tuesday, during which six companies from around the world will
perform the whole range of Balanchine’s work. Perhaps surprisingly, “there is no
sense of competition. Rather there is a sense that one company enhances another,
and all confirm Balanchine's faith in the classical ballet vocabulary as an
enduring dance idiom. New York Times
09/14/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
Wednesday September
13
-
THE
WAY TO SAN JOSE: The 41 members of the Cleveland San Jose Ballet (which went
bust last week and disbanded) are voting today on a plan to move en masse to San
Jose and start a new company. San Francisco Chronicle
09/13/00
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MIAMI
OUT-DAZZLES BOLSHOI, JOFFREY: The Balanchine Celebration Festival gets
underway at the Kennedy Center. And surprise - "of the three companies
represented on the program - the Bolshoi Ballet, Miami City Ballet and the
Joffrey Ballet of Chicago - Miami got to set the exclamation points, closing
each half of the evening with high-wattage show-stoppers. Its 'Rubies' section
of the full-length ballet 'Jewels' was about as dazzling as one could
bear."
Washington Post 09/13/00
Monday September 11
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HOW
NUREYEV TRANSFORMED THE ROYAL BALLET: "Until Rudi came along all a man had
to do to get into the Royal Ballet was, more or less, turn up and show willing.
Nureyev completely changed the pace. He engaged with female dancers, manhandled
them. It was exciting, virile." The Telegraph (London) 09/11/00
Sunday September 10
Friday September 8
-
DANCE
COMPANY CLOSES: Cleveland San Jose Ballet has canceled its season and
terminated the contracts of its dancers. Two weeks ago the company missed its
payroll for dancers and staff, and officials said the 2000-2001 season would be
canceled unless $1 million was raised by today. Since then, only $60,000 has
been raised. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
09/08/00
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REINVENTING
DANCE: South Africa's major dance companies have closed for lack of funding.
A disaster? Perhaps. "The other point of view is that the departure —
particularly of the ballet ensemble, the management style of which was
characterised by a blatant disregard for the political and artistic realities
that came into play from the middle of the 1990s — is a positive move, leaving a
gap crying out to be filled by the entreprenurially and/or artistically minded.
Over the next few months that gap is to be solidly plugged by a plethora of
local and visiting dance companies, varying in degrees of motivation from art to
capitalism." Daily Mail and Guardian
09/08/00
Thursday September
7
-
THE BOLSHOI
THEATRE’S DECLINE, culminating in the Russian president’s recent sacking of
its artistic director, mirrors Russia’s countrywide troubles. “The famed opera
and ballet company increasingly has become another monument to a bygone era,
when the resources of an all-powerful state were poured into the arts.”
CNN 09/06/00
Wednesday September
6
Sunday September 3
-
RENOS
THAT THREATEN: London's Sadler's Wells Theatre is in dire straits. A £48
million refurbishment in 1998 is at the heart of the problem. The theatre in
central London underwent a in a project designed to create 'Britain's leading
theatre for presenting dance'. But problems associated with the project not
endanger the theatre. The Independent 09/03/00
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UNDERSTANDING
MR. B: The Kennedy Center is throwing a Balanchine festival, featuring six
companies dancing 14 ballets. "The festival does not claim to be as
comprehensive as the New York City Ballet's yearlong survey of Balanchine in
1994, or even a collection of seminal works. (His first great work, "Apollo," is
not on the schedule.) Rather, its distinction should lie in providing a new
understanding of the Balanchine canon." New York Times 09/03/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
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STICKING TO
THE STORY: Choreographer Matthew Bourne created a sensation with his offbeat
"Swan Lake." Now he's back with a new version of "Carmen," which he's renamed
"Car Man." "This time I wanted to do something dirty, earthy, tethered to the
ground. At first I even thought of setting Car Man in a meat factory, with
carcasses on hooks. The dancers here are playing real people. It's like
rehearsing with actors: we argue about their motives when I suppose we should be
designing movements. But my skill is as a director of stories, not movement for
its own sake. I'd get bored if I was doing abstract dance." The Observer (London)
09/03/00
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PAVLOVA
GOES HOME: Nearly 70 years after she died, the remains of prima ballerina
Anna Pavlova will be returned to Russia from a cemetery in London. Philadelphia Inquirer 09/03/00
Friday September 1
-
THE
BOLSHOI'S HARD TIMES: Its theatre is crumbling, it's artistic reputation has
been battered, and its subsidies from the Russian government have fallen off.
It's probably not much of a surprise that the Bolshoi's regime was sacked this
week. The Times
(London) 09/01/00
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