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)
Since its founding in 1996, the regranting program has played a crucial role, supporting the creation of new dance works, funding touring, and fostering relationships between artists and presenters. As the Mellon Foundation concludes the program's funding arc, NDP's final grant cycle will support works touring from 2026 through 2029. - Dance Magazine
Gretchen Wollert McLennon, a former student at the company's school who succeeded company founder Dororthy Gunther Pugh in 2020, will depart at the end of the current season. She saw Ballet Memphis through the pandemic and increased main-stage ticket sales year-over-year. - Memphis Flyer
Azara addresses a gap in the dance world: the need for spaces where people who have autism, A.D.H.D. or other conditions that fall under the broad term “neurodivergent” can freely experience the art form. - The New York Times
Several past studies and subsequent clinical experience have shown that dancing can help with the physical symptoms of the incurable neurological disorder. A new study indicates that dancing can also help alleviate the depression suffered by many Parkinson's patients. - The Washington Post (MSN)
Rowan Moore: “The last thing choreographers and dancers want, I’m told by people who know, are spaces that swoop and curve in imitation of human movement. They want right angles, straight lines, fixed points and level horizons against which to gauge their actions.” - The Observer (UK)
"It was practised and watched everywhere, including during religious rituals, on the theatrical stage and in private houses. It was the object of nuanced reflections on the part of Roman philosophers and poets. Careful study of their texts yields hints as to what they thought dance accomplished." - Aeon
The star dancer has resigned as artistic director of Columbia (SC) Classical Ballet, at whose school he first studied dance and which he helped recover from the city's 2015 floods. His decision came in the wake of an abrupt 50% cut in funding from the city of Columbia. - Free Times (Columbia, SC)
