Zenetta Drew, who presided over last year’s fiasco — which cost the company $560,000 in a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board and $248,000 in withdrawn city funding — will retire later this year. Meanwhile, the board unanimously accepted the recommendations in an advisory task force’s report on repairing DBDT. - KERA (Dallas)
This report analyzes the gender distribution of Artistic, Executive, and Associate/Assistant Directors, as well as Heads of Schools, Heads of Second Companies, Rehearsal Directors, and, for the first time, music directors and conductors among the 150 largest ballet and classically-based dance companies in the US. - Dance Data Project
“A tradition dating back to 1954, the Dance Magazine Awards are given in appreciation of the artistry, integrity, and resilience that dance artists have demonstrated over the course of their careers. The 2025 awards have a special West Coast focus.” - Dance Magazine
Over more than a decade with Lines, Cissoko has become such a part of King's creative process that it's now almost impossible to know the dancer from the dance, as the poet Yeats put it. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
“I thought the (wider) world was so interesting (when I was young), and outside was where I could breathe. I think the world I was coming from was not one in which I could survive. As a queer, white Arab (in Belgium), everything about me was problematic for my environment.” - The Guardian
Working with a physician and several dancers, Lynne Charles (who had a 35-year-career as a principal ballerina) developed 4Pointe, a somatic method to strengthen specific muscles for pointe work. “It’s not meant to replace traditional pointe class,” she stresses. “It’s meant to go hand-in-hand alongside it, like Pilates or Gyrotonic.” - Pointe Magazine
Universally, there is an urgent call for dance’s back offices to approach funding with the same creativity, vitality, and care that goes into artistic decision-making. - Dance Magazine
“Many from the Ballet Nacional are quietly choosing to leave behind difficult conditions: Blackouts that make rehearsal spaces and exercise rooms swelteringly hot. Scarce medical supplies. Pointe shoes stuck in customs for months.” - The New York Times
Choreographer Joshua Beamish is the founding director of Ballet Vancouver, which, like Ballet BC and Goh Ballet, will focus on contemporary choreography. The company will present a home season and tour internationally. - Vancouver Sun (Yahoo!)
Earlier this year, the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), which administers the grant, announced that a lead funder, the Mellon Foundation, would no longer support the grant after this year. - NPR
“I was at the Schauspielhaus Zürich … as the new artistic director. I didn’t have to write a proposal for a piece, and I had a lot of resources. I went into the studio with the dancers with no theme. … What does it mean to have this kind of artistic freedom?” - Dance Magazine
“I don’t feel like I’ve got anything to prove. I’m slightly less wired and my life doesn’t depend on (performing) anymore. It’s like when you listen to an album and discover a bonus track. A Single Man is my bonus track. It’s a nice extra thing that I’m really excited to do.” - Pointe Magazine
“'Moving the equipment with just Kat and an intern is the last thing that would expect Kat to try to do,’ the report stated.” - Boston Globe (Archive Today)
Ticket sales are so poor, the Stuttgart Ballet will be performing for an Opera House between 4 and 19 percent full when the German company comes to Washington early next month. BodyTraffic, the Los Angeles troupe booked for the smaller Eisenhower Theatre October 29 and 30, is at 12 percent capacity. - Washingtonian
From the get-go, Common People Dance Eisteddfod has predominantly attracted middle-aged women. (One year, a team did an interpretive dance on the theme of “the symptoms of perimenopause in a subtropical climate that’s going through climate change”.) - The Guardian
