Many of the reviews of Julie Kavanagh's recent Nureyev bio have enshrined the author--they're not really reviews but mini hagiographies--while pillorying the artist himself. It's as if the reviewers--principally, Joan Acocella in the New Yorker, who thinks "Kavanagh gave Nureyev too many breaks" -- always wanted to get their revenge and now this bio has given them permission. Acocella goes so far … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2007
The British Guardian borrows our ideas. (You’re welcome!)
Dance critic Judith Mackrell of The Guardian has written a post that credits "the Artsjournal dance blog" for "chatter" and "wishful thinking" in our hopes for an ambassador for dance on the model of Pavarotti. So does Mackrell go on to prove how stupid this whole topic is? No! She borrows it whole hog for her own column, after making it properly British. (She doesn't want an ambassador for dance … [Read more...]
GO: Amalia Hernandez’s Ballet Folklorico de Mexico
For this preview in Newsday, I went to see Hernandez's Ballet Folklorico in the Bronx. Parts of it--the many parts with live music--were so beautiful and sweet, I wanted to cry. (So did a lot of the rest of the audience, it sounded like.) Anyway, the company is playing all up and down the East coast for the next two months (I mention only the local shows in my Newsday article), so for a treat, … [Read more...]
Shimmyblogger Natalia: We don’t need no Pavarotti, we need a Michael Jordan. The Foot crew responds.
So, this issue Eva got us started on about what sort of ambassador dance (yeah, all of it) could use seems to know no end--with all sorts of unexplored byways. First, reader Jamie Wright adds his vote to the Rasta nomination: Is it possible that Rasta Thomas will emerge as dance's Pavarotti? He has teen-idol looks, just married a model, and is still very young. Over the next 10 years or so, I can … [Read more...]
Forget Pavarotti, let’s do Pavlova!
Reader Susan Hood offers someone from our very own discipline as a possible model for a dance ambassador: In the last century, there were many "household names" in the dance world, but the only one who crossed between the "serious" and "popular" was Anna Pavlova. What became known as the "Pavlova Gavotte" was danced to the tune some of us know as "Glow Worm." In a yellow, faux-Regency costume and … [Read more...]
Dance films in which the film knows what to do with the dance: reader recommendations (UPDATE SATURDAY)
Videographer and dance-on-screen fanatic Anna Brady Nuse, who's got a blog within a blog on Doug Fox's Great dance site, seconds Counter Critic's recommendation of Edouard Lock's "Amelia" and offers these other informed recommendations: There are a few more exceptional dance films out there that were adaptations of stage works. In all of these cases, I've only seen the films, so can't comment on … [Read more...]