Choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, no less. “Tennis doesn’t have a strong tradition of opening numbers — and certainly not of dance routines.” - The New York Times
“I just feel fortunate. I’m still running around and everybody keeps reminding me that I’m 85. I don’t think about that so much. I do work every day. I work out every day. ... It’s the first thing I do and that sort of keeps me together physically.” - The Brooklyn Rail
"I love Russian ballet and always wanted to become a dancer, but there is no national ballet school in Japan, so I chose Russia," says his compatriot Haruka Takemi, 20, who has lived in Russia for six years. - AFP (MSN)
Managers of smaller venues fear that they would lose too much money presenting unfamiliar performers in an unfamiliar genre, said the report, which also flags the lack of university- or conservatory-level training in South Asian classical dance forms in England. - Hyphen (UK)
“Dozens of artists participating in this year’s Venice Biennale contemporary art show are threatening legal action if their names are not removed from the ballot allowing visitors to vote for the best national pavilion and overall participants in the absence of a jury” — they all resigned — “to award the prestigious Golden Lions.” - AP
“That’s the entire mission of the school Not ‘You come to us’ but ‘We bring dance to you.’ And we want people in the room who can say, ‘I was just like you and now I’m out in the world dancing.’” - The New York Times
Peter Veth has never studied in Cambodia — only in his hometown of Lowell, Mass., a center of the diaspora. But from sixth grade on he took classes with visiting Cambodian masters and at Lowell’s Angkor Dance Troupe, where he now teaches the art form to younger dancers. - Dance Teacher
“It was six weeks of being unable to move, ... to participate in life at all, before she could get out of bed. And then Lauren Cuthbertson, the biggest British dance star since Darcey Bussell, … had to persuade her useless limbs, now stripped of their strength, to listen to her brain again.” - The Times (UK)
Ballet has a reputation for upholding rigid body standards. In recent years, though, the art form has been rethinking its relationship to diversity in areas like race and body type. - The New York Times
Why so much dance on TV lately? “Where the goal is to quickly get and then hold the viewer’s attention, energetic movement is a straightforward strategy. Dance’s graphic elements immediately catch the eye, and they can make that gaze linger.” - Dance Magazine
“Maceo Harrison deftly designs routines that emphasize charisma over technical precision and spotlight the teams' natural showmen while camouflaging the players with two left feet. ... Sometimes he has mere hours to choreograph and just as little time to teach his routines to the players.” - ESPN
Alice Topp, a former principal dancer and choreographer-in-residence at the Australian Ballet, already had the idea of basing her first commission for Houston Ballet on the Finnish concept of sisu (stubbornly determined resilience). Then, this past January, came unhappy inspiration: bushfires struck her rural hometown 75 miles northwest of Melbourne. - Houston Chronicle (Yahoo!)
Despite reaching new artistic heights, Australia’s leading contemporary dance troupe has posted four annual deficits in a row, totaling $5.2 million (US$3.7 million) and attributable mostly to the higher running costs of its revamped headquarters. Luckily, paying students are flocking to SDC’s new classes. - Australian Financial Review
Ashley Ferro-Murray of the Doris Duke Foundation: I’m interested in … funding resilient models for the future as well as legacy models that ... value the labor of the artist. One way the Doris Duke Foundation is doing this is by combining our grant-making capacity with other resources like marketing and communications. - Dance Magazine
