Going right back to the original, Agnes DeMille’s “Laurey Makes Up Her Mind” in Oklahoma!, the power of the dream ballet lies in ‘being able to express something that words aren’t able to. … It liberated our form of storytelling and offered something really human and deeply revealing about the characters.” - The Guardian
“In my opinion, they are asking for proof of things that are not tangible. We are really trying to jump through all of the hoops no matter how small. The hoops get tinier and tinier but the standards and criteria are not tangible.” - Dayton Daily News
In contrast to the mess at Dallas Black Dance Theatre last year, when dancers voted to join a union and were promptly fired, leading to a nationally publicized fiasco, the dancers at Texas Ballet Theater, who voted to join AGMA in 2023, have just signed their first contract. - KERA (Dallas)
After months of increasingly public complaints by company dancers, Demis Volpi, an Argentine-German choreographer who succeeded company founder John Neumeier one year ago, will officially end his tenure at the close of this season. By mutual agreement, he is stopping work immediately. - DPA (Yahoo!)
“In the dark, brick-walled basement of the Kharkiv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, a dance company has created a space protected from drones and bombs.” A performance of Chopiniania in April was the first complete classical ballet given in the city since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. - Reuters
Toni Pimble “is that rare dancemaker whose visual sense and musical sense are equally acute; moreover, her interests are wide-ranging. Over the years she has made ballets of varying length inspired by literature, music, folk tales, Native American legends, visual arts, film, current events, and politics." - Oregon ArtsWatch
Jiří Kylián is "the Czech choreographer-cum-renaissance man, who in one pre-show discussion declares himself ‘the happiest boy in the world’: There has never been such a celebration of his work and, he suggests with wry self-effacement, there will probably never be another.” - The Guardian (UK)
“It’s never been about me. It should never have been about me. It should have been about a broader understanding that people from Black and brown communities are interested and want to be in these spaces. They just need to see themselves.” - The New York Times
For decades she has been Taylor's star dancer, muse, buddy, rehearsal director, and choreographic reconstructor. (He was never particularly interested in the details of reviving his older works.) Even now, she speaks lucidly and clearly, with her signature blunt forcefulness, about her work both over the decades and today. - The Brooklyn Rail
“Compounding recent major cuts to arts funding, the footwear the ballet world relies on could be just one more unanticipated casualty of the current president’s economic policy. Pointe shoes, it turns out, are political objects as much as they are aesthetic.” - Cascade PBS
Last month, Studio 303 publicly joined the BDS boycott, including “all cultural and academic products that normalize the State of Israel." That includes Gaga, developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin — who has said, “If the act of cancellation would have helped the Palestinians’ cause I would boycott my own show.” - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
She was a member of the innovative Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and was among the last group of dancers to be trained by the legendary choreographer. Toogood also began teaching at his invitation. - Sydney Morning Herald
“When Rauschenberg was breaking out as one of the most influential artists in the world, that influence extended into American dance” through his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. “And it flowed in the opposite direction, too, as he folded his theatrical work back into his solo practice.” - The New York Times
A former director of the Vienna State Ballet and La Scala Ballet after his performing years, Legris was the supreme classicist of his era. Now he’s back home, making a new version of the Léo Delibes ballet Sylvia, using a classical movement style rarely seen in new ballet choreography today. - The New York Times
“When I’m dancing with her, I feel her feeding energy back to me. It’s not quite like being on stage with another human, but she’s not just an inert thing that I have to feed with my energy in order to bring it into the dance.” - ArtsATL
