DanceSport International London used to be a dance studio - but now it employs 52 artisans constantly engaged in costumes for the West End, not to mention films and TV series. The dance background makes sense: "Performers want to move, and we want to accentuate the movement” - BBC
Gonzalo García is only the third artistic director in the company’s history, after founder Edward Villella and predecessor Lourdes Lopez. He only started in the job on August 11, and Lopez had long since planned this season, but García is hard at work. - Pointe Magazine
For a start, they’ve raised the starting age from 11 to 13. And they’ve done away with many of the rigid and arbitrary body standards for which ballet has been notorious — for instance, teen boy students won’t be tossed out for being too short, or girl students for being too buxom. - The Guardian
The Royal Ballet has long offered headphones with audio descriptions so that visually impaired members of the audience can follow the action on stage. Now the entire audience will hear such descriptions, within a groundbreaking work that explores how blindness can redefine our responses to sensation, sound and storytelling. - The Guardian
They decided only an hour beforehand to dance the performance but not show up at the red carpet or gala dinner — because they “wanted (their) absence to be felt.” They maintain that management’s offers in contract negotiations “fall far short” of other U.S. companies' contracts, despite NYCB’s greater “financial stability.” - The Cut (MSN)
The closure of Tampa Bay classical companies during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred co-founder Heather Ossola’s desire to fill the void. “I really felt like I had something to offer and give the Tampa Bay area a company they deserve,” she says. “And I had some experience working as a ballet mistress.” - 83 Degrees (Tampa)
Limón adapted the 1920 play for his company in 1956, and the company’s current artistic director decided it was time for a revival: “The original story is about … a felon who becomes a tyrannical leader. I didn’t feel the imagination had to go far to draw a contemporary parallel.” - The New York Times
They did the evening’s performance — fulfilling their contract obligations, as they pointedly mentioned — but skipped the red-carpet photo ops and left vacant their places alongside wealthy patrons at the dinner tables. The quasi-strike comes amid contract negotiations, with dancers insisting that their pay reflect New York’s soaring cost of living. - Page Six
He hasn’t danced for nearly a decade. He has damaged bones and tendons and claims to know all his vertebrae by name. But he’s still fiendishly driven. - The Guardian
After 25 years, the Bangladeshi-British choreographer is closing down his touring troupe to pursue new creative directions. In a Q&A, he discusses the Akram Khan Company’s final project: Thikra: Night of Remembering, which uses dancers trained in Bharatanatyam for a ritual work inspired by the ancient Nabataean culture of Petra and AlUla. - ArtReview
“I was thinking, she’s the mother of modern dance,” said English National Ballet artistic director Aaron S Watkin. “She’s so iconic and famous, but hardly anyone is doing (her work in the UK).” His company and a few others may be changing that. - The Guardian
“By now I’ve spent upward of 5,000 hours in ballet classes, and roughly 1,600 hours more in other, non-ballet dance classes. … I dance as if it were my job.” - Slate
Walsh helped Scarlett create several scenes for the London premiere in 2016, then danced the title role in the 2017 revised version at San Francisco Ballet. Walsh was injured for the 2018 revival, so he helped stage it, and he has restaged it several times since Scarlett’s death in 2021. - L.A. Dance Chronicle
There are so many other things that I could be doing to accomplish my longtime goal of bringing more equity and awareness of ballet’s lack of diversity, and finding ways to meet people where they are in communities like I grew up in. That started to override how I felt about being onstage. - Dance Magazine
“While Vancouver offers a wealth of contemporary-dance companies and high-caliber ballet schools, ‘no one is bringing classical ballet here beyond a touring Nutcracker, or producing it on a professional level,’ Beamish says. (The well-established Ballet BC performs mainly contemporary repertoire off-pointe.)” - Pointe Magazine
