ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

DANCE

Choreographer Cathy Marston Will Be Next Director of Zurich’s Ballet

"Particularly noted for her narrative work, … Marston will take over as new Ballet Director and Chief Choreographer for an initial period of two years, starting from the 2023-24 season. … Marston has previous directorship experience in Switzerland, having been Ballet Director at the Konzert Theater Bern from 2007-2013. There, she created several world premieres including Wuthering Heights (2009),...

For First Time, Indigenous Australian Choreographer Will Lead Non-Indigenous Dance Company

Daniel Riley, who comes from the Wiradjuri people of central New South Wales, spent 12 years dancing with and choreographing for Bangarra Dance Theatre, Australia's (and possibly the world's) most prominent indigenous dance company. At the beginning of 2022, he starts work as artistic director of the company's oldest contemporary dance troupe, the Adelaide-based Australian Dance Theatre. - ABC...

The Tango Is Just What We Need As Pandemic Eases

Watching audience members take to the stage of a Washington theater for a “milonga” — a gathering to dance the tango — one observes a moving milestone in the ending of the drought of human contact. - Washington Post

Accusations Of Drug, Psychological, And Sexual Abuse Rock Maurice Béjart’s Dance Company

"Switzerland's prestigious Béjart Ballet Lausanne company faces a probe as allegations of drug use, harassment and abuse of power raise the question why nothing apparently changed after an earlier investigation raised similar issues. … The Maurice Béjart Foundation announced the audit just a week after revealing that the affiliated Rudra Béjart ballet school had fired its director and stage...

Boston Merges Ballet And Virtual Reality

It's impressively intimate: "As you stand in the middle of an undulating semi-circle of bodies, each moving with snakelike ports de bras, you discover how eye contact can change the tenor of a performance. By its very design, VR dance is meant to be this visceral. The audience is but a hair away from the action, and occasional trips...

The Blogger Preserving Jewish Ballet

In college, Beatrice Waterhouse started wondering where she could find information about Jews in the ballet world. So she created a Tumblr site, "'People of the Barre' (which, yes, is a play on 'people of the book') and started using the blog to store tidbits she came across about Jews in ballet, mainly for her own reference." - Forward

Carlos Acosta Calls For Ballet That Reflects Now

"I don’t want to keep riding with own Swan Lake or The Nutcracker – that’s fine, I love them, that made my career – but what else can I bring that speaks about me now? That’s why every time I do programming, I encourage choreographers and collaborators to go towards that direction." - The Stage

By The Numbers: Who Are The Bosses At US Ballet Companies And What Are They Paid?

" that the position of Artistic Director is held by far more men than women, while the position of Executive Director is much more equitably distributed. However, in both Artistic and Executive Director roles, men are compensated at a higher rate than their female counterparts." (One prominent detail: Peter Martins earned way more than anyone else — though one...

Choreographing The Social Distancing At Dance Parties

"SOCIAL! the social distance dance club advertised a COVID-conscious rave this spring, where people were free to let loose together in the Park Avenue Armory's Drill Hall. David Byrne MC'd the evening's festivities, but the real dance happened before the party. The choreography was as follows." - The Brooklyn Rail

Alvin Ailey ADT In The Age Of BLM: Artistic Director Robert Battle

"The foundation is the experiences of African Americans in this country — and knowing that is not monolithic. Within the diversity in African American culture, people, and experiences, it's finding ways to engage to tell those stories that reflect the time in which we live. Not all choreographers I bring in are African American. That's important because there are...

Queering ‘Giselle’

Katy Pyle and her company, Ballez, have a new work called Giselle of Loneliness (click here if you don't get the reference) "that grapples conceptually with ballet's stringent and arguably exclusionary, conformist and outmoded traditional norms. … production pairs seven dancers, all female-assigned or of femme experience, with an imaginative framing concept: They are competing to play Giselle,...

A Choreographer Learns To Rest, To Improvise, And To Feel Joy

During what we might call "the long 2020," choreographer Kyle Marshall experienced quite a bit of change. "In this next step of his career, he said, he’s more focused and more comfortable making decisions. But the pandemic made also him realize something else: Just how exhausted he was." Now he's trying to be more intentional, working more carefully with...

The Nexus Of Dance And Drag Is Growing

And it's not — not just — the Trocks and RuPaul's Drag Race. The latter, however, by its popularity and creativity, does seem to have created space for dancers and choreographers, even high-profile ones, to shake off the rigid gender expectations that have held sway in dance and to experiment with costuming, make-up, and gender-neutral movement and roles. -...

Carolyn North, Still Dancing At 83

In her life, North, "the Bay Area-based dance therapist, writer, and flutist, has talked her way into a summer dance intensive camp, having had little formal dance training; sung in a gospel choir; played flute professionally; worked as a midwife; learned to play bass bamboo flute while living in India; written and published 11 books; birthed three children; founded Daily...

Queering Flamenco (Which Could Really Use It)

"When the journalist and filmmaker Ana González was growing up near Madrid, in the nineteen-nineties, flamenco seemed both ubiquitous and retrograde. For González, this exuberant style of dance and music, which emerged in southern Spain, represented a cloying brand of nationalism. 'I used to reject the conventional flamenco story, because I associated it with a very conservative tradition,' she...

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');