Choreographers and performers from Africa and its diaspora have a notable presence on the coming year's list, as do dancers blurring gender boundaries and a sibling choreographer team from the Netherlands. - Dance Magazine
Ask a wardrobe supervisor: "To build a singular tutu it’s 80-100 hours. ... There’s 15 yards of tulle, and 10-14 layers, depending on the tutu." Now imagine the number of tutus on stage for Nutcracker. - Cincinnati Enquirer
The return-from-lockdown galas the company did in Sydney and Melbourne were different: each city got to see pieces which were cancelled there before. But closing night in Sydney was less than a week before opening night in Melbourne, where the stage is 40% bigger. - The Age (Melbourne)
Under legislation to update China’s noise pollution ordinances, to be sent to lawmakers next week, dance enthusiasts will face limits on the volume of their music and times that they are allowed to occupy public spaces. - Washington Post
Kelley Hashemi’s day job is as an aeronautical engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, where she leads a research team working to integrate automation into the national airspace. She's also a principal dancer with the Peninsula Ballet Theatre. - San Francisco Chronicle
Jorden Morris had been hired as this season's interim artistic director in August, just after Robert Hill resigned with immediate effect after 13 years. Morris now has the position full-time, with a contract running through the 2024-25 season. - Orlando Sentinel
Rachel Kapelke-Dale: "In the end, Ballerinas turned out to be about the violence that emerges from the rage of being trapped in someone else's dream; the fury that emerges once you realize what produced that dream in the first place." - Literary Hub
The renovated Ted Shawn Theatre will have a new ventilation system and stage housing. The festival's other indoor venue, the Doris Duke Theatre, burned down in November of 2020; this past summer's performances were outdoors and/or online. - The Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Mass.)
The pandemic hit dancers hard. The president of a new dance network: "We all feel the rhythm in our hearts and we move, and so that's what we stand to do and that belief, that need existed long before the pandemic ... and it will exist long afterwards." - KLCC (Oregon)
The venue "has postponed its ballet season premiere after a coronavirus outbreak in its ranks, just days after the famed Milan theater staged its high-profile opera season opener with a full-capacity audience." - Voice of America News (AP)
Bijayini Satpathy spent 25 years performing and teaching at Nrityagram, the famous dancers' village near Bangalore, before deciding to become a touring solo artist. She has pared back the ornate jewelry worn in Odissi style and changed the viewpoint from which key dances are performed. - Dance Magazine
Of 179 artistic directors of major ballet companies, 59 are women (33%), while 119 are men (66%), and 1 is gender expansive (0.6%). Similarly, of artistic directors of the Largest 50 U.S. ballet companies, there are 15 women (29%) and 36 men (71%). - Dance Data Project
He grew up watching Jerome Robbins's original choreography in the film, and he's danced it himself in the West Side Story Suite Robbins created for New York City Ballet. So both Peck himself and the Robbins estate knew he could retain the original's spirit. - The Seattle Times
The Kibera district of Nairobi is home to 250,000 people, most in extreme poverty. Michael Wamaya, a Kibera native, returned home from Europe in 2008 and began offering dance lessons to vulnerable children; by 2017, he was able to open a dance academy called Project Emilu. - Euronews
