Laura Fernandez, who studied and then danced at the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg before becoming first soloist at Moscow's Stanislavsky Theatre, has family in Mariupol. "I would tell my friends in Moscow and they would say, 'No, it's fine, they're not killing those guys, they're saving them'." - The Guardian
Golden State Ballet first took the stage late last year, reviving the now-defunct California Ballet's staging of Nutcracker, but this week the company presents its first original program, a four-piece mixed bill including a world premiere commissioned from choreographer Andrea Schermoly. - The San Diego Union-Tribune
Although the city had repealed its Cabaret Law, a 1926 regulation that made it illegal to host dancing, singing or musical entertainment without a license, zoning law restrictions left many establishments unable to permit dancing. - The New York Times
What many of the 600,000 patrons who annually pass beneath its iconic red windmill entrance probably don’t know is that the Moulin Rouge is not quite as quintessentially French as you might think. - Toronto Star
Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide behind, like another costume; it was a place he could control his body. - The New York Times
It's a "miracle," he says, that a ballet in 1900 was notated at all, let alone that the notation survives. As for teaching the movement to performers in 2022, he says, "I very much disagree with the idea that the technique of the dancers is so much better now. I think it's just different." - The Age (Melbourne)
"Every day on the respiratory ward at one of (Bishkek's) biggest hospitals, nurse Aidai Temiraly kyzy puts on the music and leads her patients in the Kara Jorgo, the national dance. ... The session is part of a treatment programme offered to people with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease." - The Guardian
The players have their moves; the half-time dance team is a troupe of grannies; the ushers and umpires dance; the first-base coach is a professional hip-hop dancer. The Bananas, a fave on TikTok with 2.5 million followers, are the rare collegiate baseball team with a national following. - The New York Times
"What goes into transforming a work from screen to stage? What gets added, lost or modified? Pointe spoke with three choreographers to learn what made the process challenging and interesting." - Pointe Magazine
“The company is more racially diverse today than it was in 2020, when about 30% of the company was BIPOC. Racial identity should only be identified by the individual, but the company is currently about 45% individuals of color with five dancers identifying as Black or Brown." - Seattle Times
"I don't think we should be afraid of tackling complex stories and not feeling like the audience has to understand every second; one of the beauties of dance is that we get to escape into this poetic abstraction, even within a story ballet." - The Guardian
An Afro-Caribbean repertoire of quadrille square dances (accompanied by drumming and singing) that combines a complicated vocabulary of symbolic movements with improvisation, bèlè is seeing a revival on the island after long years of discouragement by a central government in Paris keen to promote continental French culture. - The Conversation
“Dancing is a form of escapism for some of us,” Diamond Hardiman, a 28-year-old dancer from Chicago, tells me. “So it’s about being real and honest, yes. But at the end of the day it’s also about being tough. You know, like, solid. And being free.” - Mic
"Four years ago, Alicia Graf Mack — a former star of Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey — took the reins of the dance division, with plans to usher in an altogether more diverse experience. The pandemic, alongside changing conversations around race and gender, shifted that evolution into high gear." - Vanity Fair
"Susan Jaffe, who recently turned 60, has in mind such steps as opening up artistic processes to the public and soliciting views from balletgoers and other stakeholders on the delicate task of updating thorny works from the classical canon. It's an audience-first approach." - MSN (The Washington Post)
