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DANCE

Mark Morris Says No, Artists Are Definitely Not OK Right Now

Morris, on dance rehearsal: "It was horrible. ... Everyone was freaked out. You’re scared being next to each other, and you’re scared to talk to anybody, and as soon as you touch something it’s sanitized, and then you go home and take a shower right away." - Washington Post

San Francisco Ballet Pulls Itself Apart Over Diversity

A public Instagram account detailed dancers’ and staff members’ accounts of inequities. Amid the fallout, Executive Director Kelly Tweeddale, hired in 2019, stepped down in 2021. - KQED

Here’s The Man With The Key To The Past At Jacob’s Pillow

"As director of preservation (and archivist), Norton Owen oversees exhibitions, the growing online resource Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive, PillowTalks, pre- and post-show lectures, and film programs. Owen describes his motto as having 'one eye looking backward and one eye on what's happening currently." - Dance Magazine

How Is It That Dance Takes Over The Body And The Mind?

History and culture offer a treasure trove of attempts to interpret dance’s unique power over our bodies and minds. - LitHub

How Has The Dance World Changed In The Past Few Years? Matthew Bourne’s Answer Is —

"In a general way, I think men dancing has become a much more acceptable sort of profession. That change has had a lot to do with television and Strictly (Come Dancing). … There's been a massive shift, I think, in the public's perception of what dancing is." - The Sunday Post (Glasgow)

Dance Data Project’s Latest Report Looks At College Dance Faculty

Among the major findings are that roughly two-thirds of dance professors (both full-time and part-time) and four-fifths of program coordinators are women, but two-thirds of deans of dance are men. - Dance Data Project

Ballet Dancer-Turned-Economist Has Suggestions For Fixing Ballet’s Job Market

Olivia Hartzell, who spent nearly a decade at Pennsylvania Ballet and the Royal Ballet of Flanders and is now a PhD student at Harvard, has some ideas about applying the field of market design to some of the dysfunction in the recruiting of dancers as it currently happens. - Dance Magazine

Chicago Dance Community Aims To Take A Broader View Of Dance In The City

The city of Chicago has designated 2022 the Year of Chicago Dance in recognition of an art form that is ubiquitous, burgeoning, diverse—and precarious. - Chicago Reader

Those TikTok Surveillance Videos Asking Amazon Delivery Drivers To Dance Are Actually Horror Movies

Demanding your delivery person dance is, let's say, not great. "Forcing another person to dance for you is a classic villain move rooted in the folklore traditions of many cultures, these customers proceed to shamelessly post the evidence to social media." - The New York Times

Will Dance Companies Keep Experimenting With Film And Video After They’re Performing Live Again?

"Screendance provided an attractive platform to explore new directions for choreographic works. … The challenge now, is how to keep going." - Dance Magazine

Remember Ski Ballet?

"On social media, it's easy to get lost in videos of this bygone athletic art. Clips from its Olympic appearances as a demonstration sport — at Calgary in 1988 and Albertville in 1992 — surface frequently on YouTube and TikTok, to the fascination of dance and sports enthusiasts." - The New York Times

Space Choreography: Redefining Movement For Extremely Low Gravity

Dancer and planetary science PhD student C. Adeene Denton: "Getting to set the first site-specific work on the International Space Station (was) a big pipe dream of mine … before I studied enough astronauts to realize that most of them beat me to it." - Dance Magazine

Well, The Super Bowl “Volunteer” Halftime Dancers Won’t Be Working For Free This Year …

"Four hundred volunteers working for up to 72 hours as 'field cast participants' during this weekend's Super Bowl LVI halftime show will be paid $15 per hour" — minimum wage, for one of the most lucrative annual sports events in the world. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

The Kirov Academy Ballet School Is Closing (Note: This Is Not In Russia)

Don't panic: this school isn't connected with the St. Petersburg company now known as the Mariinsky, although its first directors came from there and aimed to reproduce its teaching methods. This Kirov Academy, in DC, was founded by none other than Rev. Sun Myung Moon. - The New York Times

The Most Dancerly Skater At The 2022 Winter Olympics

Jason Brown, a 27-year-old American, probably won't get an individual medal at these games because he doesn't have a consistent quadruple jump. Yet, writes Laura Cappelle, the quality of his movement is extraordinary: "Every step is three-dimensional, … perfectly timed to either the melody or the bass line." - Dance Magazine

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