If climate change is an integral part of your work, how do you write a proposal to an administration that is actively not wanting to draw attention to that science? I think we’re going to find that some of us are maybe more cautious about how we communicate. - Dance Magazine
"Developed by Hangzhou Yushu Technology, also known as Unitree, the robots kept up with the beat of a Chinese folk dance and danced with red handkerchiefs. They spun the handkerchiefs in circles, tossed them into the air, and caught them again with precision, drawing applause from the audience." - Business Insider
The Royal Ballet School (RBS) has reached a financial settlement with a former student, who said the body-shaming she experienced while at the elite institution has left her with lifelong psychological damage. - BBC
Pacific Northwest Ballet dance historian Doug Fullington talks about drawing on the original libretto and photos from the 1890s and the Stepanov notation made in St. Petersburg after the turn of the century. - Dance Magazine
Top-level lion dancing in China incorporates acrobatics and martial arts — and has traditionally excluded women from performing. But an 80-member lion-dancing troupe called Lingdong, in the city of Shantou, is one-quarter female; its coach intends to bring that to 50-50 and, eventually, to train an all-women group. - AFP (Yahoo!)
Women choreographed 30.6% of works presented by the largest 150 companies in the 2023-24 season, down 1.5 percentage points from the previous season. However, the percentage of world premieres choreographed by women rose to 48.8%. Within the largest 10 companies, only 14.6% of works were choreographed by women. - Dance Data Project
Elizabeth Cameron Dalman more or less created the country's contemporary dance scene when she co-founded and directed Australian Dance Theatre in Adelaide in 1965. She's been dancing and teaching ever since, and she now runs an artists' retreat and dance company in the bush outside Canberra. - The Guardian
Lion dances for Lunar New Year are part of “an art that dates back to the Han Dynasty and is said to bring good fortune and ward off evil spirits, but it is hard to pull off.” - NPR
A former principal at San Francisco Ballet and artistic director of Oregon Ballet Theatre, he was most recently Karen Kain's associate artistic director at the National Ballet of Canada. He takes up his new position in June. - Winnipeg Free Press
A full house for the National Ballet of Ukraine these days is 560 people, because that's the capacity of the bomb shelter in the theater's basement. Here's a photo journal of the Christmas production at a company where, as one ballerina puts it, every show could be the last. - The Times (UK)
The new professional company, based in the large Dallas exurb of Plano, will debut in August and will follow with a three-show mainstage season and appearances at dance festivals next spring and summer. Local ballet instructor Sydney Blalock Ritchie is artistic director, with Cindi Lawrence Hanson as executive director. - Plano Magazine
"Her centennial is this year — she died in 2013, at 88 — and she remains widely regarded as America’s first prima ballerina. … Her legacy rests ... in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s — a series of revelations about what ballet could be and what a ballerina could look like." - The New York Times
"Rhythmic beats echoed through the Tunis Opera Theatre stage as dancers faced off at the first-ever edition in the Arab world of a street dance tournament originating in Paris. This year's Juste Debout is hosted in eight cities including London, New York, Beijing and Tokyo, as well as the Tunisian capital." - AFP (Barron's)
The metro Pittsburgh-born Graham spent her teenage years in Santa Barbara and saw her first dance performance — featuring her future teacher Ruth St. Denis — in Los Angeles in 1911. "She talked about how intoxicating the light in Santa Barbara was to her, and she would just run and spin." - Orange County Register (MSN)
