The auditorium at Queens Quay had been called the Fleck Dance Theatre; early this year, the Harbourfront Centre, which manages Queens Quay, declined to renew the Fleck’s lease. Now the Toronto Stage Company will take over, presenting its own mainstage season there and making it available to dance organizations. - Ludwig Van
“As moving machines like drones and self-driving cars become more integrated into our daily lives, the tech companies behind them are realizing they need experts who understand motion through space and time, and how the nuances of that motion affect the way we feel about their products. Translation: They need dance artists.” - Dance Magazine
Josephine Flos was rehearsing the opening of “Figure,” a new dance piece created by the fashion designer Lisa Konno in collaboration with the choreographer Peter Leung, that tries to answer a simple question: What if choreography starts with the costumes? - The New York Times
“The Ballet National de Marseille has also taken a bold new direction under the leadership of the experimental collective (LA)Horde, producing edgy performances drawing on internet-native styles like jumpstyle and TikTok choreography. Dancers and choreographers are relocating to the city, too.” - Dance Magazine
Two of New York’s most prominent dance philanthropists are donating $15 million to the Joyce Theater, a leading dance stage in Manhattan, helping to assure the theater’s long-term financial stability at a time when dance organizations are struggling with declining financial support and audiences. - The New York Times
AISOMA is a Google AI-powered choreography tool that acts as a creative catalyst by generating new, original dance rooted in my choreographic language. - Google
“A new Dance Hall of Fame has been established to honor the significant contributions to the discipline of dance. Included in the freshman class of inductees are Alvin Ailey, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, Misty Copeland, Bob Fosse, Martha Graham, Gene Kelly, Kenny Ortega, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp.” - Broadway News
Ballet Theatre was renamed American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in 1957; journalists don’t often use “essay” as a verb anymore (though maybe we should); and the Company is now very diverse, with principal dancers and soloists hailing not only from the U.S. and Europe but also Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico and South Korea. - Observer
The Boston Ballet’s Howard Merlin: “During the dress rehearsal, something looks really, really bad. … It’s my job to make sure it looks really, really good by the next day.” - Boston Globe (Archive Today)
“Everything you see on the stage starts with Eyal herself improvising, which is then mapped on to the dancers. ... Each movement idea could be slowed down, reversed or repeated. ... From a small amount of source material, Eyal will play with composition and timing and layering up movement.” - The Guardian
“The team performs for hundreds of thousands of fans each year, appearing frequently at sporting events, community centers, festivals and conferences across the Northeast. … The Pacemakers boast 47 members and have won fans around the globe with viral performances that have racked up millions of views online.” - New York Post
“Dance is already abstract, and so the role of us as artists is to be as specific as possible with what we want to say. That’s how we make dance speak. We are talking heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, with the audience.” - The Minnesota Star Tribune
“Kureishi, 70, who wrote the award-winning novel The Buddha of Suburbia and the film My Beautiful Laundrette, has devised a filmed piece about the devastating aftermath of his fall for two leading ballet dancers, in collaboration with choreographer and Royal Ballet principal character artist Kristen McNally.” - The Observer (UK)
Wayne McGregor worked with a Google Arts & Culture Lab team to develop a choreographic language agent called AISOMA — a tool that can create and reiterate phrases and movements from a huge repository of dance data. He's also created a pas de deux which audience members watch inside a circular 12K LED screen. - Financial Times
In an attempt to cater to evolving tastes, bring in as many attendees as possible and expose the next generation to ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet has been programming productions that tap into popular stories to help sell tickets. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
