Dance

Dancers are rarely ever given comprehensive or healthy guidance on how to get into the shape that’s being asked of them—even when the resources are available. – The Observer (UK)

Chloé Lopes Gomes, a Frenchwoman whose father came from Cape Verde, joined the corps of Staatsballett Berlin in 2017 after studying at the Bolshoi and dancing in companies in Nice and Lausanne. She says that she suffered harsh and repeated racial harassment from the ballet mistress in charge of the corps; when she reported the issue to top management, she was told that nothing could be done because that ballet mistress had a lifetime contract. – Pointe Magazine

Brian Seibert looks at two projects, Heidi Latsky Dance’s On Display and Kinetic Light’s Descent, that are indicative of the variety and diversity found in the field of disability dance today. – The New York Times

“Just before midnight every evening in December, some 70 digital billboards encircling the gaudy canyon of Times Square will be co-opted for three minutes by slow-motion images of Black voguers, performing dances of resistance, resilience and liberation. The video installation is the work of the multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome, who has remixed footage from live performances of his 2019 piece Black Magic.” – The New York Times

Fair enough. The teen, and other dancers, keep their routines going during the pandemic, as well as they can. The high school senior: “I want to inspire people. I wish for people to be moved and left with a sense of pride and joy when they watch me. … That’s all I’ve ever dreamed of really, on the stage or in the street. I want people to look at me and feel inspired.” – Greenville (South Carolina) News

That is, if you’re willing to watch on-screen. Collected here are well over 30 options for watching The Nutcracker, or some version of it, this holiday season, from ballet companies across the United States. – Playbill

“While works of dance clearly are eligible for copyright protection under Section 102(a)(4) of the Copyright Act, determining which dances meet the standard — and which have two left feet — has been tricky and has resulted in a number of high-profile disputes in recent years. However, a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an unrelated copyright dispute may provide important guidance in subsequent dance-related copyright litigation.” – IPWatchdog

Maybe — but, says Dance/NYC’s executive director, “In order for decentralization to be sustained, it must come with intentional investment and organization. … You need cities that invest in the arts as dignified work that should be paid.” – Dance Magazine

Lucy Green is deeply aware of her privilege right now in the world of ballet – to be employed, to be practicing, to be planning for performance, none of it can be taken for granted during a pandemic. When the interviewer asks her which famous people she’d invite for dinner, she keeps it absolutely real: “I’d much rather have dinner with my family and friends who live interstate/overseas and who I haven’t seen all year due to border closures.” – Ballet News

The director of the Royal Ballet, discussing the live-streamed performances: “It’s so important for them to do what they’re trained to do, to be in the studios together, to be rehearsing, and to be performing. It’s their job; it’s their life.” – CNN

A few weeks after the lockdown started back in March, Merritt Moore — who danced with ballet companies in Oslo, London and Boston before getting a Ph.D. in physics from Oxford — hit on the idea of using a robot as a partner for dance training while in isolation. So she ordered an industrial model and started programming it to do 15-second ballets with her for TikTok and Instagram. The pair has since racked up about 15 million views. (And yes, the machine’s name, which was crowdsourced, is Baryshnibot. The runner-up choice was Roboto Bolle.) – Pointe Magazine

“Most full-length classical ballets feature several character dances — troupes of dancing peasants, parades of visiting princesses. Today, those dances are often seen as ‘filler,’ interludes to give the principals a breather between classical variations. But back in the 19th century, … character dances had deep cultural significance. … (Picture a Paris opera house full of cheering crowds, demanding multiple encores after their favorite star performs a knockout mazurka.) How did something that used to be so popular, and once provided critical context, fade from prominence?” Nicole Loeffler-Gladstone gives an overview of the history. – Dance Spirit

From the small operations that give youngsters their first lessons (especially in lower-income areas) to big establishments like the Broadway Dance Center in Manhattan, dance studios, and the skilled pros who run and teach in them, still have to pay the rent and other expenses even as income has plummeted since COVID-19 struck last spring. Here’s how a few of them are trying to avoid closure and keep dance available to their neighborhoods. – The New York Times

“The position has been open since former director Douglas Martin’s departure in 2019. …. Stiefel, a former American Ballet Theatre star with directing, teaching and choreographing experience, [begins next July and] brings major name recognition and international credentials to the New Brunswick, New Jersey–based ARB.” – Pointe Magazine

“I think that caused me to be really clear for myself about why I was doing what I was doing. I could not take into consideration how people would respond. That included funders and audiences. Part of the risk, then, is that maybe nobody will show up. But when I tried to make things that I thought would please people, I thought those pieces were disasters.” – Dance Magazine

“‘It looked like what a bomb must look like when it goes off,’ said Pamela Tatge, the executive and artistic director of [the summer dance mecca], who saw the damage [to the Doris Duke Theater] firsthand. ‘It was just a pile of steel and wood. There’s amazingly one wall and one staircase that remained.'” – The New York Times

“It seemed impromptu. It wasn’t entirely. The undeniable joy before, on, and after Election Day was organic. But a coalition of Philadelphia progressive organizations, many of them Black-led, have for months planned for political tension and unrest, determined to turn down the temperature.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Starting as a summer project in 1974, Dancemakers went on to curate award-winning Canadian and international performances and play host to a multiyear resident artist program, as well as many presentations and workshops. More than 4,000 audience members and artists passed through each year.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

The ballerina danced with the Houston Ballet for years (and now is a program manager in its education department). “I’ll never forget seeing my first Sugar Plum Fairy. Standing there, I’m looking through a stairway that’s part of a set for the party scene. I remember looking through the rungs of that stairway into the light at the Sugar Plum Fairy and wanting to be her. So, I got to retire as the Sugar Plum Fairy. There’s a picture of a Mother Ginger Child looking through the rungs of the stairway as I’m the Sugar Plum Fairy. I was just like, that was me 40 years ago.” – Texas Highways

They went fully digital for 2020-2021, making a deal with Marquee TV for four performances. The dancers were split up into 10-person pods, with tests before rehearsal and before filming. Composers Zoomed into orchestra rehearsals. It wasn’t easy, but: “Dancing in a mask and the restraints of the protocol, I mean, nobody loves it. But in comparison to not dancing, really, it’s nothing.” – Washington Post

In early 2017, Doug and Ashley Benefield moved to Charleston with ambitious, high-profile plans to create a top-level ballet company and school there — and over that year, the project gradually and messily fell apart. Now Ashley has been arrested near Bradenton, Florida and charged with shooting Doug during an argument; the couple had separated and were in an ongoing custody dispute over their daughter. – The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)

Gia Kourlas: “Last weekend, the explosion of dance — which overtook social media, making it seem like it was happening everywhere — was a celebration of community. But for those of us in the dance world it emphasized another point: While the pandemic will continue to prevent public performances for what now looks to be another year or so, dance is still alive in the world. … Dancing is not just about moving your body, but reclaiming it — and with that, your faith in the world.” – The New York Times

“In the time between COVID-19’s first worrisome appear­ance in the U.S. and, for many, months of shelter-in-place orders, dancers and teachers alike found their opinions of online learning shifting: from outright resistance, initially, to begrudging acceptance, to — for some — actual enthusiasm.” – Dance Magazine

The Spanish dancer, who reportedly died in 2019 after battling Alzheimer’s disease, has captivated social media since a video surfaced of Marta González, by then confined to a wheelchair, vividly recalling the upper-body choreography of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” — her delicate ballet hands graceful as ever. – New York Post

After 50 years, and as she nears age 90, the company’s founder is making way for her longtime assistant artistic director, Kim Bears-Bailey, who first joined Philadanco as a dancer in 1981 and calls her boss “Aunt Joan.” But Brown isn’t stepping all the way back just yet: “I’m number 1, Kim is 1B.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

When it comes to the secrets of longevity in a dance career, Linda Austin and Bobby Fouther had similar thoughts: you do what makes you happy, just keep going, and ignore the pressures to be liked. In an interview for a book called Beauty is Experience: Dancing 50 and Beyond,  by Emmaly Wiederhold with photographs by Gregory Bartning, Austin said, “If you are stubborn enough and love it enough, you’ll find a way to keep going. You do need some outside validation from time to time. I’ve always gotten just enough to keep me going but not enough to make me comfortable. The carrot is always just ahead.” – Oregon ArtsWatch

Ballroom dancer Trisha Pérez Kennedy says that “normally, her partner’s touch helps communicate the next step in a dance combination. ‘We use the strength of our bodies to speak to each other,’ she says. ‘It can be as subtle as the pressure of his hand on my back to help me know what will happen next. When you’re dancing on your own, you don’t have that guidance keeping you in check. You have to own all of your technique.'” – Wall Street Journal

The world of mixed martial arts is deeply violent – and Khan, who has been dancing for 30 years, wanted to confront his own fears about violence. He ended up choreographing for the fighters. “Once Khan realised that the spectacle surrounding MMA was just as important as the fight itself, he set about creating a dance-based narrative for Brazier’s walk-on to the cage, merging the controlled violence of both practices.” – The Guardian (UK)

“The choreographies are designed for the functionally diverse artists so that they can demonstrate their artistic qualities. As I create, I physically put myself in their place (wheelchair, etc.), testing and experiencing the choreography. I search for innovative ways someone with restricted movement can achieve the same intention, such as hitting the floor with the wheelchair to create what would be the percussion of footwork. – Dance Magazine

“At the forefront of this growing field is Sydney Skybetter, a former dancer and a professor of what he calls choreographics at Brown University, where his students approach dance in a way that is heavily computational. … By the end of the 20th century, motion capture, wearable tech and virtual reality had arrived on the scene. Then came A.I.” – The New York Times