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DANCE

A Dance Critic Considers The (Extensive) Choreography Of The Queen’s Funerary Ceremonies

"Like the classic 19th-century ballets that display massed ranks of identically costumed, identically moving dancers, the rituals have shown us many military units from Britain and the Commonwealth moving with the kind of as-one-being synchronicity that is the dream of ballet directors the world over." - The New York Times

Dance Theater Of Harlem’s Resident Choreographer Will Be Its Next Artistic Director

Robert Garland, a former DTH dancer mentored by founder Arthur Mitchell, was the company's first resident choreographer.  He succeeds Virginia Johnson, a founding member of DTH who brought the company back to the stage after an eight-year hiatus caused by a debt crisis. - The New York Times

It’s Difficult To Overstate The Importance Of Martha Graham To American Dance

Modern dance in the United States did not emerge from a legible high-art context—a handful of individuals, mostly women, had to make their own, insisting on dance not as entertainment but as art, at a time when they had neither support nor recognition. - BookForum

Where Jodie Gates Plans To Take Cincinnati Ballet

"What I'm really hoping for is we develop our own style. A hyper-musical, full-port-de-bras style layered with joy, with beautifully coordinated dancers ... who can do classical and contemporary work. A style that, when our dancers are seen elsewhere, people say 'Oh, you must be from Cincinnati Ballet.'" - Pointe Magazine

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. -...

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