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

• "HEIDI WANTS ME TO DO THIS": The mother of the Boston Ballet dancer who died possibly of an eating disorder is planning to sue the company, claiming the company's "insistence on thinness caused her daughter's untimely death." Boston Herald 09/22/00

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

  • REVIEW of Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center. 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

• 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

• 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

  • 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• AFTERMATH OF CLEVELAND BALLET FAILURE: The collapse and disbanding of the Cleveland San Jose Ballet was a shock for dancers/staff. Meanwhile, the San Jose board will try to extend a season there. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 09/09/00

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

• 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

• DANCE THIS: Where are the new choreographers coming from? "Ballet has recently drawn on modern-dance choreographers for the new works it needs to sell a season. But some new ballet choreographers are developing from within companies like Dance Theater of Harlem." New York Times 09/06/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

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 

• 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)

• 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

• 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