The National Ballet of Canada’s costumes, designed by Broadway mainstay Santo Loquasto, have absorbed a lot of wear, tear, and sweat over three decades. Here wardrobe chief Stacy Dimitropoulos, resident cutter Chris Read, and several company dancers talk about costume care and maintenance. - Toronto Life
And he’s not going to be a rule-breaker, trying to revolutionize the art form: “There’s nothing wrong with organic movement. … There’s a reason why it’s attractive, in the way nature’s attractive. There’s an inbuilt idea of beauty, and you can play with that.” - The Guardian
Richard A. Freeman Jr. served on an interim basis for two seasons, including holding the company together through the turmoil following the firing of 10 dancers for attempting to unionize. - KERA (Dallas)
Jane Raleigh: “There was definitely an overarching feeling of waiting for the shoe to drop. I was committed to staying until I was removed, (but) I did believe from the beginning that everyone would be fired at some point. … Basically every payday Friday was mass firings day.” - Forward
Mack, who did two stints as a principal dancer with the company (and got a master’s degree in-between), says her vision is to balance between Alvin Ailey’s own “powerful, visceral” choreography and new pieces by Fredrick Earl Mosley, Matthew Neenan, Jamar Roberts, and Urban Bush Women founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. - NPR
“As with other artistic attempts to track the mind more accurately — like the stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce — O’Connor’s coexistence-of-everything choreography can appear off-putting and abstruse. But O’Connor isn’t trying to be difficult, he said.” - The New York Times
August Bournonville directed the company in the mid-19th century, and his works and style became thoroughly identified with the institution. Yet for some years the RDB turned away from Bournonville toward contemporary ballet; new artistic director Amy Watson is bringing his works and style back to the company’s heart. - The New York Times
“As AI technologies proliferate and become an increasingly inescapable fact of modern life, choreographers are not only experimenting with AI tools, but they’re also creating works that grapple with the potential repercussions of artificial intelligence and the existential questions it raises.” - Dance Magazine
Toronto-based Ballet Jörgen had just begun its annual December tour of Ontario with the holiday favorite when the rental truck containing its sets and backdrops was stolen around 3:30 am Monday morning. - CBC
“Biosensors are devices designed to measure real-time processes and responses within the body, like a person’s heart rate, blood oxygen level, and sleep quality. … Here are a few ways biosensors have been used to expand research in dance medicine.” - Dance Magazine
As VR becomes more widespread, a growing number of dance artists and companies are exploring—and, in some cases, redefining—what this technology can do. - Dance Magazine
An exec at the firm Move AI insists that the combination of motion-capture and AI software isn’t to replace dance artists but to streamline the repetitive, tedious process of animation. (The dance artists are still nervous.) Meanwhile, other AI programs stand to make the work of dance historians and archivists easier. - Dance Magazine
Watching a dance rehearsal as a score-addicted musician is surreal. You can have 30 people in the room, and only two of them will have the score. What is fascinating is that the choreographer has imposed an entirely different, invisible form of notation on the form of their counting. - The Guardian
