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DANCE

Meet The Strippers Working To Make Their L.A. Dive Bar An Actors’ Equity Venue

As "Reagan", one of the group's leaders, tells a carful of potential patrons, "We do want to dance. We love it in there. We're fighting for safer working conditions," pushing to unionize with Equity.  Then she invited the guys to come dance with them on the picket line. - NPR

Ukrainian Ballet Star Killed On The Battlefield

The National Opera of Ukraine announced, with "indescribable sadness," the death of Oleksandr Shapoval, one of the company's former principal dancers and a teacher at Kyiv State Choreographic College. - NPR

Most “Petipa Ballets” We See Today Aren’t Really By Marius Petipa.  So How Important Was He, Really?

"Today's dance audience is continually watching whole acres of choreography still called 'Petipa' that simply aren't Petipa. But even Petipa's audience was watching lots of Petipa that wasn't by Petipa. ... (Yet) even if he copied all his choreography from others, it was his that lasted." - Alastair Macaulay

Why Europe Couldn’t Have A Serge Diaghilev Today

"Everything Diaghilev did was ad hoc, on a wing and a prayer or a plea and a handshake. He answered to nobody; there was no board, no governance beyond his say-so; accounts were scribbled into a little black notebook. State subsidy put an end to this modus operandi." - Prospect

When ABT Tried To Break Ballet Out Of The 18th Century

"Audience members generally rustle their programs and shift in their seats when performers are onstage. But on that late October evening inside Lincoln Center in 2021, 'it was so quiet,' remembers. 'Absolute silence.'" - Mother Jones

The Pacific Northwest Ballet At 50

PNB "is basking in the aftermath of successful summer tours" to NY and LA. "With almost 40 dancers on full-time contract, its own critically acclaimed orchestra and a thriving ballet school that serves hundreds of students in both Seattle and Bellevue, PNB has earned an international reputation." - Crosscut (Seattle)

How Do You Revive Bob Fosse’s “Dancin'” Without Bob Fosse?

Choreographer Christine Colby Jacques and director Wayne Cilento, who both were in the original 1978 production, are re-creating (a word Colby Jacques doesn't like) the revue this year.  The challenge: the '78 Broadway staging was never videotaped, and there's not much footage from elsewhere, either. - Dance Magazine

New York City Ballet Dancers’ New Contract Has Some Real Changes

Not only does the new labor agreement include a 6.7% pay raise and restoration of benefits suspended when the pandemic arrived, the company formally committed to hiring an intimacy coordinator and allowing tights to match a dancer's skin tone. - The New York Times

Introducing A New Award, A “Turner Prize For Dance”

Sadler's Wells in London has announced the biennial Rose International Dance Prize, with a £40,000 main award for a full-length piece and £15,000 for a shorter work by a young choreographer.  As with the Turner, the finalists for the Rose Prize will be presented to the public together. - Arts Industry (UK)

Inclusive Dance Is A Growing Art Form

It's an emerging art form — inclusive dance — in which dancers may be in wheelchairs, or on crutches, or have no obvious challenges at all, and professionals often mix with amateurs. - The World

How Balanchine Reckoned With The USSR

The U.S.S.R. filled him with dread, and his return brought to light one of the great themes of his life: he had set his own path away from the Marxist materialism of the Bolshevik Revolution, and quietly built, in N.Y.C.B., a village of angels and a music-filled monument to faith and unreason, to body and beauty and spirit. -...

The First Artist Management Agency Specializing In Classical Ballet Dancers

Rebecca Haw had a bumpy ride before landing her permanent position in the ballet company at Dresden's Semperoper. Hoping to spare other dancers some of her troubles, she founded CODA — and business quickly boomed as potential clients flocked to the agency. - Pointe Magazine

The Leader Of Hollywood’s New Choreographers Guild Explains Why The Union Is Necessary

"Choreographers for major network TV shows are getting paid less than the dancers. The entertainment industry needs a lot of education about how vital choreographers are, because ... they have no idea of all the things we do behind the scenes just to make a shootable dance scene." - Dance Magazine

Copyright Suit Over Dance In Video Game “Fortnite” Is Tossed Out

"A judge for the Central District of California has dismissed a lawsuit by choreographer Kyle Hanagami against Epic Games. Hanagami filed the suit in April, alleging that Epic had used his choreography for the 2017 music video "How Long" by Charlie Puth without permission or attribution." - PC Gamer

A Wave Of New Indigenous Dance On Canada’s West Coast

Indigenous dance is always a way to share knowledge and teachings across generations, a way to know and express who you are, and who your relations are, past and present. For a small group of First Nations and Métis dancers on Canada’s west coast, tapping into cultural traditions has provided a powerful place from which to develop their own...

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