This year's honorees are choreographers Lucinda Childs, Kyle Abraham, and Dianne McIntyre; dancer Herman Cornejo, a principal at ABT; and historian of African-American dance Brenda Dixon Gottschild. - Dance Magazine
PNB is a vastly different company now than it was in 1972: More than 50% of its dancers self-identify as people of color (up from 27% 10 years ago) and the company’s repertoire has morphed into a smorgasbord as heavy on contemporary dance and modernist ballets as it is on old favorites. - Seattle Times
"Like the classic 19th-century ballets that display massed ranks of identically costumed, identically moving dancers, the rituals have shown us many military units from Britain and the Commonwealth moving with the kind of as-one-being synchronicity that is the dream of ballet directors the world over." - The New York Times
Robert Garland, a former DTH dancer mentored by founder Arthur Mitchell, was the company's first resident choreographer. He succeeds Virginia Johnson, a founding member of DTH who brought the company back to the stage after an eight-year hiatus caused by a debt crisis. - The New York Times
Modern dance in the United States did not emerge from a legible high-art context—a handful of individuals, mostly women, had to make their own, insisting on dance not as entertainment but as art, at a time when they had neither support nor recognition. - BookForum
"What I'm really hoping for is we develop our own style. A hyper-musical, full-port-de-bras style layered with joy, with beautifully coordinated dancers ... who can do classical and contemporary work. A style that, when our dancers are seen elsewhere, people say 'Oh, you must be from Cincinnati Ballet.'" - Pointe Magazine
As "Reagan", one of the group's leaders, tells a carful of potential patrons, "We do want to dance. We love it in there. We're fighting for safer working conditions," pushing to unionize with Equity. Then she invited the guys to come dance with them on the picket line. - NPR
The National Opera of Ukraine announced, with "indescribable sadness," the death of Oleksandr Shapoval, one of the company's former principal dancers and a teacher at Kyiv State Choreographic College. - NPR
"Today's dance audience is continually watching whole acres of choreography still called 'Petipa' that simply aren't Petipa. But even Petipa's audience was watching lots of Petipa that wasn't by Petipa. ... (Yet) even if he copied all his choreography from others, it was his that lasted." - Alastair Macaulay
"Everything Diaghilev did was ad hoc, on a wing and a prayer or a plea and a handshake. He answered to nobody; there was no board, no governance beyond his say-so; accounts were scribbled into a little black notebook. State subsidy put an end to this modus operandi." - Prospect
"Audience members generally rustle their programs and shift in their seats when performers are onstage. But on that late October evening inside Lincoln Center in 2021, 'it was so quiet,' remembers. 'Absolute silence.'" - Mother Jones
PNB "is basking in the aftermath of successful summer tours" to NY and LA. "With almost 40 dancers on full-time contract, its own critically acclaimed orchestra and a thriving ballet school that serves hundreds of students in both Seattle and Bellevue, PNB has earned an international reputation." - Crosscut (Seattle)
Choreographer Christine Colby Jacques and director Wayne Cilento, who both were in the original 1978 production, are re-creating (a word Colby Jacques doesn't like) the revue this year. The challenge: the '78 Broadway staging was never videotaped, and there's not much footage from elsewhere, either. - Dance Magazine
Not only does the new labor agreement include a 6.7% pay raise and restoration of benefits suspended when the pandemic arrived, the company formally committed to hiring an intimacy coordinator and allowing tights to match a dancer's skin tone. - The New York Times
Sadler's Wells in London has announced the biennial Rose International Dance Prize, with a £40,000 main award for a full-length piece and £15,000 for a shorter work by a young choreographer. As with the Turner, the finalists for the Rose Prize will be presented to the public together. - Arts Industry (UK)
