"The appointment follows a long vacancy after resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo's departure in 2018. ... (While) Cerrudo lived in Chicago full-time and, until 2015, was also a dancer in the company, Barton's tenure is likely to be more transient. She'll come to Chicago for two weeks here, four weeks there." - Chicago Tribune
"Over the course of his decades-long career, Harris ... has been a guiding force, ushering hip-hop and street dance into new spaces and championing their history and legacy. ... Rennie Harris University builds on the principles that have shaped its founder's career, bringing them into the classroom." - The New York Times
Choreoroboticist Kate Sicchio: "It's really interesting to have this unfamiliar device do this uncanny human thing. It’s similar to why we love putting googly eyes on everything. This makes it human even though it's not supposed to be. And that becomes funny or endearing somehow." - Inverse
Kiyon Ross at Pacific Northwest Ballet: "The skills you learn as a choreographer are definitely transferable to being a leader. ... You have to have a certain kind of authority over the room—not an oppressive kind of authority, there just needs to be someone running the show." - Dance Magazine
Which is to say, not since George Balanchine's Jewels (1967). Premiering this week, Peck's Copland: Dance Episodes is also City Ballet's first use of Aaron Copland's three classic ballet scores: Rodeo, Billy the Kid, and Appalachian Spring. Joshua Barone looks in the creative team in rehearsal. - The New York Times
As with ABT Studio, Ailey II, and other companies (largely in the US), BRB2 will offer limited-term contracts (in this case, two years) to dancers just finishing school, giving them experience beyond just the corps de ballet before starting full-fledged careers. BRB2's first UK tour will be this spring. - SeeingDance
Currently, he serves as the executive director of the National Dance Institute, a non-profit arts education organization in New York that has impacted more than 2 million children through inclusive dance and music programs.- Miami Today
"Officials compare each battle dancer’s moves and style to their opponent’s, with special scrutiny paid to categories called 'body' (physical moves), 'mind' (creativity in response to the music and the opponent’s moves), and 'soul' (interpretive flair and style)." - Fast Company
"(With performers) wearing colourful inflated suits and roaming across streets, parks and city centres, La Grande Phrase (The Big Phrase) is a dance-work series by Montpellier-based Campagnie Didier Théron that explores ways to upend stereotypes of what a dancer should look like or do." - ArtsHub (Australia)
"He is mathematical like Balanchine, but there's more of a lightness, an everyday quality that feels playful, even when the steps are technically arduous. … In honor of this peak Peck moment, we asked Peck and his collaborators to decode his artistic tics." - New York Magazine
"Twenty-two Indigenous dancers move as one in a circle with a man dancing in the middle. They call him 'el general.' Lazaro Arvizu has dedicated his life to promoting Danza Azteca, a spiritual Indigenous tradition from Mexico, in Los Angeles for more than four decades." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
"Adam McKinney, a Milwaukee native who has danced with numerous companies around the country, succeeds Susan Jaffee, who departed in December to become artistic director of American Ballet Theatre after two years in Pittsburgh." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The proposal made Thursday means that venues no longer would need a license to organize dances. Instead, as a general rule, they would only have to register with the police, which can be done verbally and does not cost anything. - AP
Rouge et Noir was created for the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo in 1939. Dance critic Ann Barzel filmed parts of the work in Chicago in 1949; that film, restored and synched to the Shostakovich score, is the finale of the Matisse exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
