DECEMBER 2001
Sunday December 30
THE
POINT OF BALLET: Scottish Ballet's decision to move away from traditional
ballet meant there were no Nutcrackers this year. But "one might ask what
is the point of having a Scottish ballet company if it doesn't plan to do the
great ballets. It is like the English Shakespeare Company saying it is sick of
doing Shakespeare. It would be much cheaper to do something with a lot fewer
actors that didn't require such a big theatre." Glasgow Herald 12/29/01
Friday December 28
CLEMENT
TIME: Financial Times dance critic Clement Crisp is one of the most
respected critics in the UK. Crisp "commands English like a maestro controlling
a vast orchestra of thousands upon thousands of instruments, some splendidly
abstruse. Readers scurry to their dictionaries. Ballet, which of all the
performing arts offers the highest challenge to any attempt to express it in
words, has produced a tiny handful of star writers able to match the brilliance
of the achievements they saw on stage with their own verbal artistry."
Ballet.co.uk 12/01
Thursday December 27
THE DANCING
SWAN: "Ever since Swan Lake got the choreography and the attention it
deserved, it has been one of ballet's most frequently performed works. But in
the course of its travels it has been tarted up, dumbed down, made over and
psychologised more than any other ballet." The
Guardian (UK) 12/26/01
Sunday December 23
WHO OWNS
DANCE? "The Martha Graham Dance Company sits in an unfortunate limbo, having
already discontinued performances for more than a year and a half. The oracular
high priestess of modern dance could scarcely have foreseen that a bitter battle
over the rights to her legacy would end up in federal court."
The New York Times 12/22/01 (one-time registration required for access)
ROYAL
REFORMER: London's Royal Ballet has been on a down cycle for a number of
years. And lots of turmoil. Into the mix walks the company's new artistic
director Ross Stretton. He's been given a mandate for big change. "Working in
Mr. Stretton's favor is that he was not around in the late 1990's, when the
Royal Ballet went through prolonged misery during the closure and reconstruction
of the Royal Opera House." Still, it's likely to be a bumpy ride. The New York Times 12/22/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Thursday December 20
ABT CUTS PROGRAM
TO CUT COSTS: American Ballet Theatre has canceled a planned Stravinsky
program for the end of the season. "We're looking at the potential of a 5 to 10
percent problem on a $30 million budget. It's primarily a result of the
recession that already existed before Sept. 11, but it's certainly been
heightened since that time. The postponement of the program will save Ballet
Theater about $400,000." The New York Times 12/20/01
(one-time registration required for
access)
Wednesday December 19
CHILL
IN THE AIR: Seems there's an English dancers' union rule that says dancers
don't have to perform if the temperature in a theatre is below 19 degrees
centigrade. Saturday the theatre in Liverpool was packed with kids for an
afternoon performance by the English National Ballet, when, just a few minutes
before the curtain was due to go up, dancers canceled the performance. Why? The
temperature backstage was 18 degrees. Liverpool Daily
Post 12/18/01
THE
OFF-STAGE DANCE: "Where once every male classical dancer was assumed to be
somewhat limp in the wrist, today such prejudice is untenable. Ballet's men have
become progressively more rugged, more overtly masculine on stage. Off-stage,
there are girlfriends, wives and children, viz Channel 4's Ballet Boyz –
two series of video diaries (a third coming soon) made by a pair of ex-Royal
Ballet dancers, the matey, unpretentious and decidedly straight William Trevitt
and Michael Nunn." The
Independent (UK) 12/19/01
Tuesday December 18
TAKING
THE BULL BY THE HORNS: "Alberta Ballet is not dancing around the issue of
its first deficit in more than a decade. It has appointed Larry Clausen, a
Calgary businessman with a penchant for restoring the health of financially
troubled companies, as its new board chair." Calgary
Herald 12/18/01
Sunday December 16
BIRTHING
A CLASSIC: A year ago Northeast Magazine held a contest to come up with a
new "holiday classic" set in Connecticut. The winner features Elvis, dancing
martini glasses, The Jetsons and insurance elves. Hartford Ballet took up the
idea, and decided to produce it this Christmas. The story's author followed the
process of turning her work into dance... Hartford
Courant 12/16/01
Wednesday December 12
THE PREGNANT
DANCER: "Ballet dancers are among the leanest, fittest women on the planet.
Their professional success is won by exerting phenomenal control over their
minds and bodies. They are a completely different species from the gently
swelling mother-to-be, whose world is ruled by hormone rushes, heartburn,
bloated ankles and piles. While a few dancers embrace the mad biology of
motherhood with pleasure, most will confess that it's hard to ditch the habits
of a lifetime." The Guardian
(UK) 12/12/01
SKIN
TIGHT: Some ballerinas from the Australian Ballet posed in bikinis in a
popular magazine. But "some patrons of the Australian Ballet, the country's
premier ballet company, have cancelled their subscriptions in protest at the
pictures in the January issue of the Australian edition of FHM magazine."
The Independent (UK) 12/12/01
Monday December 10
SAN
JOSE A YEAR LATER: It's been a year since Cleveland San Jose Ballet left the
midwest to reform in Silicon Valley. "Ballet San Jose now operates on a $6.5
million budget, making it one of the 14 largest ballets in the United States.
Among the 40 dancers now listed on the Ballet San Jose roster, only 14 performed
in Cleveland. More than 20 members of the former Cleveland troupe moved to
California last year when the company collapsed. But several departed at the end
of the season to pursue other careers or join ballet companies in less expensive
cities." The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland) 12/09/01
AILEY'S CHOROEOGRAPHY
PROBLEM: While conceding that the Alvin Ailey company has terrific dancers,
New Yorker critic Joan Acocella believes the company's choreography has never
lived up to the quality of its performers. That may be changing with the
addition of Ronald Brown's work; he comes out of a Garth Fagan tradition rather
than that of Ailey. The New
Yorker 12/10/01
HARD
NUT: Going to The Nutcracker is supposed to be fun, right? Nothing
serious. Nothing important. A San Francisco woman takes her kids to a
performance and finds the audience full of Grinches. "Their grimaces said it
all: Life is a chore and going to the ballet is serious business." San Francisco Chronicle
12/10/01
Friday December 7
LOSING
DANCE: "The issue of preservation is uniquely difficult for dance. A
performance vanishes with the closing curtain. Afterwards it cannot
comprehensively be recaptured either from notation or video. The camera often
misses key detail, concentrating perhaps on the central action to the detriment
of what may be happening elsewhere on stage. This is true even of companies'
specially commissioned video-records, some of which fail woefully to document
work properly. As a result, much still depends on dancers' memories; without
them it is harder to make a piece come alive."
Ballet.magazine 12/01
Thursday December 6
LOOKING
FOR HOMEGROWN: "A quiet revolution is taking place in British ballet, a
revolution that has seen the future of dance at the highest level entrusted –
almost entirely – to overseas choreographers." Now, as another British company
looks for a new artistic director, will the job be entrusted to a Briton?
The Independent (UK) 12/06/01
SCOTTISH BALLET BOARD
REFUSES TO QUIT: The board of the Scottish Ballet has refused to resign
after a parliamentary committee condemned the board's inept management of the
the company. "Chris Barron, chief executive of Scottish Ballet, described the
report of the education, culture and sport committee as 'a classic of
inaccuracy' and said there were no grounds for any resignations by board
members." The Scotsman
12/06/01
Sunday December 2
SCOTTISH ROW OVER
DANCE: Scottish Ballet wasnt to turn itself into a modern dance company. But
this week a Scottish Parliament committee condemned Scottish Ballet’s financial
plans as "hopes, wishes and false expectations," and accused it of erecting a
"necessary smokescreen" in announcing it would be moving away from traditional
ballet. Now the wife of the Scottish First Minister says she supports the
company's plans. The Scotsman 12/01/01
THE ATHLETE
BECOMES DANCE: Judith Jamison has created a dance about Olympic athlete
Florence Griffith Joyner for her Alvin Ailey company. She writes about the
process of choreographing an idea into dance. The New
York Times 12/02/01 (one-time registration
required for access)