When the Australia Council announced its latest four-year funding winners in 2020, Restless was a shock omission, as were La Mama Theatre in Melbourne and The Blue Room in Western Australia. It means a $1.2 million shortfall over three years — a nightmare scenario at any time for an arts company, let alone during a pandemic. - ABC News...
In the wake of George Floyd's killing and the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country, Ballet West's Black dancers were asked by their artistic director what needed to change. They weren't shy about the list. "When performances resume after the coronavirus shutdown of live events, Ballet West will no longer use makeup to lighten dancers’ skin or make them...
In 2012, a different ABT alum, Julio Bocca, was named director of the Ballet Nacional del Sodre in Montevideo with the remit to raise the company's level. One of the first things he did was recruit his colleague, ABT soloist Maria Riccetto, to come back to her hometown and join the company; so she did, and she became a...
"You feel the weight of the famous Palais Garnier opera house itself, and the history and legacy of the legendary dancers who have performed there. And then there's the pressure of expectations, but after about eight minutes in a room full of dancers, I felt okay. They were all so welcoming, and you could sense how hungry they were...
"When the first COVID-19 lockdown rippled across the Bay Area last March, the dance community reeled. … But as the pandemic unfolded, the crews adapted: leveraging technology to rehearse remotely, dancing outdoors and performing via YouTube or Instagram as live events disappeared. Over the last year, they've found ways to keep dancing together, strengthening their community and confronting social...
Broadway dancer NaTonia Monét says that, even when theaters finally start up again, "you have your few Black shows that come along, but other than that, you're fighting for the one or two token roles in the cast." And (with the sole exception of Ailey) Black dance troupes, from small regional companies right up to Dance Theater of Harlem,...
Jerusalema is a song by South African house musician Master KG. Friends in Angola filmed themselves dancing to the hit - the moves have since been recreated the world over. From health workers to nuns to children, everyone is getting involved. - ITV
He suspects the engraver made the mistake while copying the score, and it didn’t get caught during proofreading. If Tchaikovsky noticed, there’s no indication of it in his correspondence around that time, according to Schwarm, the historian. - San Diego Union-Tribune
Of course he did. "Like modern immigration laws, the Emergency Quota Act inspired a wave of pro-immigration activism, and Porter, who was born to the state’s wealthiest family and lived abroad after graduating from Yale, was part of it." - Indianapolis Monthly
"I realized right away with COVID that people were becoming dancers, in that their spatial awareness was growing. We were literally afraid of each other's presences. We were backing away from each other on the street, remember? … Our bodies were very, very alive, unfortunately with this negative sense of contagion, but nevertheless it was a choreography that was...
"Without visible exemplars, many queer women and non-binary people question their own place within the art form. “Growing up, I felt like I was the only one,” says Kiara DeNae Felder, a queer, non-binary dancer with Montreal’s Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. “I felt like, ‘Maybe there’s a reason I don’t see other people like me.’” - The Guardian
"The story of breaking's meteoric rise to the Olympic stage — it's set to make its debut at the Paris Summer Games in 2024 — involved an unlikely and reluctant partnership between street-savvy breakers and traditional ballroom dancers, an evolution of an urban art form into a competitive endeavor and a lightning-fast education campaign to sell Olympic officials and...
Some of the recommendations are both obvious and overdue: no more yellowface/brownface/blackface, hire more diverse choreographers (but classical choreographers, not contemporary or hip-hop as is the past), tights that match skintones, etc. Other measures will face more resistance, especially the suggested changes in the way the company recruits dancers and students. - Pointe Magazine
Christopher Rudd’s creation is the first romantic same-sex pas de deux in ABT’s history, and one of the first—if not the first—to celebrate queer lust so explicitly in ballet. Such a feat, while to be applauded, is long overdue for a world in which more than half of the men who perform in and champion the artform are members...
"As they announce plans for the spring and summer — mostly digital, garnished with a little outdoors and in-person — many New York dance presenters spoke in recent interviews about what they've been up to and how the pandemic has changed their business. … Even without box-office revenue, most have continued paying artists, sometimes with no expectation of any...
