Dance

“Regardless of who it is that you’re watching dance, whether they’re doing a classical ballet or a hip hop piece or a post-modern piece, who you are watching on stage is already a political statement, and it’s an artistic statement and those things are not mutually exclusive because we’re working with human bodies.” – KPBS

“The Joffrey said that the decision, sparked by the COVID-19 crisis, will cost the non-profit institution in excess of $9 million at the box office. … [The company] also announced a new virtual programming initiative, the Joffrey Studio Series, … [and] said it was beginning a new ’25 for 25,’ a year-long series of ‘free performances, programs, and partnerships with peer organizations’ from around the city, celebrating 25 years since the company arrived in Chicago.” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)

In which Sejal Shah reconnects with Rathna Kumar, with whom she took master classes in South Indian dance three decades ago, and joins “Vintage Kuchipudi Divas,” Kumar’s WhatsApp group for middle-aged former students who take video dance classes together every week. – The Guardian

“Departing her post as a principal dancer at San Francisco Ballet, she embarked on a multifaceted, bicontinental career as ballet master and principal dancer at Dresden Semperoper Ballett, and artistic advisor and school director at Ballet San Antonio — and then COVID-19 hit, sidelining performances and administrative plans at both companies. But ballet dancers are nothing if not resilient. In her new leadership roles, Sylve is determined to help shepherd ballet through this challenging time — and transform it for the better.” – Pointe Magazine

In 2018, after now-former City Ballet principal Chase Finlay sent nude images of his ex-girlfriend, Alexandra Waterbury, to two of his colleagues, Waterbury sued all three men as well as the company and its ballet school, where she had previously been a student. The judge on the case has now dismissed all claims against the company, the school, and the other two dancers as well as six of Waterbury’s seven claims against Finlay, allowing to proceed only the charge that Finlay violated “a city administrative code prohibiting unlawful disclosure of an intimate image.” – The New York Times

Such viewing from afar, once rare in concert dance, has become ordinary. But where most such performances these days are free and prerecorded, this one was ticketed and livestreamed. If you missed the show, you couldn’t catch it later, so it had immediacy. But, unlike most livestreams, this was not a static recording or a glitchy presentation over Zoom. Watching it felt more like watching a movie, immersive and absorbing, yet easily the most technically sophisticated live dance production I’ve seen since theaters closed. – The New York Times

To watch them, you have to subscribe to BalletX Beyond, which also gives you access to premieres later in the season, along with extras like interviews and making-of documentaries. The cheapest plan is $15 a month — less than a ticket to a live show but almost as much as premium Netflix. It’s a necessary experiment, especially for companies without huge endowments. Somebody has to figure out how to get people to pay for digital dance. – The New York Times

“The company has revealed ambitious details of its ‘comeback’ after a seven-month break from full performances on the Covent Garden stage. The plan is for a celebration performance with 100 dancers and a full orchestra on 9 October, livestreamed around the world. … And while it will be socially distanced, there will be dance duets thanks to couples in bubbles.” – The Guardian

“That disconnect grows wider every year as contemporary choreographers look beyond ballet — if not beyond white Western forms entirely — in search of new inspiration and foundational techniques. Yet dancers at almost all of the world’s leading mixed-rep ensembles take ballet classes before rehearsals and shows. Most companies rarely depart from ballet more than twice a week and some never offer alternative classes.” This has, in fact, been a subject of debate since Diaghilev’s day. – Dance Magazine

Rainer, avant-garde choreographer and filmmaker, has a new book out. “A book about dance is a book, but it is also a mirror. And when a choreographer puts a mirror up to her work, angling to see it with new clarity, she often encounters her own reflection: her image and the mythologies of that image, her layered and conflicting legacies, the ways in which she has moved through the world — or appeared to.” – Los Angeles Review of Books

Says Festival Ballet Providence director Kathleen Breen Combes, “I kept getting these emails of dancers saying they just need a place to train this year. I thought, What if we could provide a space for dancers to get stronger, experiment and try new things in a nonjudgmental and no-pressure environment?” And so the company’s Leap Year program was born. – Pointe Magazine

“Dance … is an art form that frequently involves the kind of bodily contact that, in a nondance context, would be watched extremely closely, perhaps nervously. … Despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that dancers are often nearly as comfortable with other bodies as they are with their own, it’s important to make and maintain space for honesty about personal limits and power dynamics.” Zachary Whittenburg looks at how the techniques and principles that intimacy coordinators use in theater and film can be applied to concert dance. – Dance Magazine

Fortunately, she meticulously documented them, too. “Over the years, thousands of hours of rehearsal footage accumulated in Brown’s archive, most of which make up 1,200 videotapes known as the Building Tapes. … After an extensive search for the right home, the company is placing its founder’s archive — including the Building Tapes and corresponding notebooks, known as the Building Notebooks — at the … New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.” Siobhan Burke takes a look at what’s in there. – The New York Times

The incomprehensibly high number of complaints, though astonishing, speaks to Britain’s problematic conceptualisation of race and its relationship to racism. It shows a general intolerance to confront it. This, in part, is based on the denial of racism and a mythical idea of Britain as post-racial, where racism and racial inequality no longer exist. – The Conversation

“Trey McIntyre, Amy Seiwert, and Gregory Dawson [talk about] what they are doing to keep their companies afloat and … about their perspectives on dance, ballet, digital dance offerings, and the state of the art.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

Well, to be truthful, it’s his performers who are engaging the grain directly. Artist Lee Mingwei’s performance installation Our Labyrinth, a meditative ritual in which performers sweep a mound of rice across a floor, has arrived at the Met Museum. Met Live Arts director Limor Tomer got the idea to add movement by Jones, who says he isn’t changing Lee’s piece but rather “infecting” it. – The New York Times

The next day, back home in Brooklyn, I watched the livestream of the Saturday evening show, curious about the difference. In truth, the virtual experience was in some ways an improvement. The frame of the camera, like the arch of a proscenium stage, brought a focus and a sense of proportion to the choreography that it had lacked outdoors. “Natural History,” I thought, is a theater dance without a theater. – The New York Times

Is it the community, the special bonds developed from years of rehearsals and auditions and performances? Is there something to be said for the pure athletic exertion of dance and the endorphins brought forth by exercise? Or does dance transcend other activities and provide us with a deeper connection to our own humanity? – Dance Magazine

“So what happens when there’s no ice and the rinks are closed? During the coronavirus pandemic, the figure skaters of Ice Theater of New York have found their flow by trading ice for concrete and blades for wheels. They’ve taken to the streets — and parks and playgrounds and basketball courts — with inline skates.” Gia Kourlas reports. – The New York Times

“The report spoke of failures in school leadership and oversight. While it did not describe individual incidents, it said physical and psychological abuse had been taking place for years without consequences. Current and former students spoke of ‘lots of drilling and physical stress’ including beatings, verbal attacks and humiliation by instructors. The expert commission demanded the SBB be fundamentally reformed and democratized.” – Deutsche Welle

“An Obie Award-winning director and founding member of the 1960s collective Judson Dance Theater, [he] may not grasp the ins and outs of TikTok, but it seems as though he’s been preparing for digital dance … his entire career.” Gia Kourlas talks with Gordon about The Philadelphia Matter — 1972/2020, a video collage, commissioned for this year’s virtual Philly Fringe festival, of 30-odd Philadelphia dancers performing various segments from three of his works from the 1970s. – The New York Times

“A Hindu rights activist based in Nevada is accusing the Houston Ballet of cultural insensitivity and is urging it to cancel its upcoming performances of La Bayadère, scheduled for February, saying the ballet set in India ‘trivializes Eastern religious and other traditions.'” (Of course, as the company’s executive director observed, thanks to the coronavirus, it’s still not entirely certain that the run will even happen.) – Houston Press

“Virtual rehearsals had been running for five weeks when [company members] got the news: Colorado Ballet’s PPP loan had run out, and [all] of Colorado Ballet’s dancers were being furloughed.” – Denverite

“[Multiple announcements of closures] paint a picture of a dance landscape in crisis. Without dance studios, professionals lose their places to train or work out new art before it appears to the masses. And amateurs lose their go-to outlet for creative expression or alternative to boring workouts.” – Los Angeles Times

“Whether the Juba or stepping, social dance has always been a big component of Ms. Brown’s choreography. … When the pandemic hit, … like many other dancers and choreographers, she turned to Instagram, where she has created a virtual version of a school she never attended, one in which social dance is the foundation from which everything else flows.” – The New York Times

Beyond navigating COVID-19, Ms. Jaffe has big ideas for PBT and its growing school. She wants more diversity in choreography, more collaborations with museums and other institutions and someday, perhaps a choreographic festival in Pittsburgh. In regards to the PBT School, additional satellite locations are being considered as a way to bring ballet into more communities. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

No, it wasn’t to generate random patterns of movement; rather the contrary, in fact. Ellen Jacobs, for years his company’s publicist, recounts how, at age 70, when his body could no longer demonstrate to his dancers everything he wanted, he began using a software program called LifeForms: “He carefully moved the limbs of these avatars — he called them Michelin men — joint by joint, in multiple directions, and wondrous new possibilities appeared.” – The New York Times

Chelsea Ainsworth and artist Kyle Netzeband decided that presenting dance on film or online just wasn’t adequate. So they decided they’d try putting on a series of shows on the roof of their six-floor East Village apartment building. Amazingly, the landlord was game for it. – The New York Times

Trans dancers are challenging the conventions. Hayden Moon says it’s not easy: “I’d spent years learning to be high on my toes and not make any noise and never let my heel touch the ground, doing all of these very pretty kicks and leaps and jumps. And then all of a sudden I was getting told by my dance teacher that I wasn’t loud enough.” (And that’s the least of the challenges he’s faced in the Irish dance world in Australia.) – Dance Magazine