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DANCE

San Diego’s New Ballet Company Mounts Its First Production

Golden State Ballet first took the stage late last year, reviving the now-defunct California Ballet's staging of Nutcracker, but this week the company presents its first original program, a four-piece mixed bill including a world premiere commissioned from choreographer Andrea Schermoly. - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Zoned For Dance: NYC Mayor Says Dancing Will Help City’s Recovery

Although the city had repealed its Cabaret Law, a 1926 regulation that made it illegal to host dancing, singing or musical entertainment without a license, zoning law restrictions left many establishments unable to permit dancing. - The New York Times

Dancing The CanCan At Le Moulin Rouge

What many of the 600,000 patrons who annually pass beneath its iconic red windmill entrance probably don’t know is that the Moulin Rouge is not quite as quintessentially French as you might think. - Toronto Star

What “MJ” The Musical Tells Us About What Dance Says About You

Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide behind, like another costume; it was a place he could control his body. - The New York Times

Alexei Ratmansky Reconstructs Petipa’s “Harlequinade”

It's a "miracle," he says, that a ballet in 1900 was notated at all, let alone that the notation survives. As for teaching the movement to performers in 2022, he says, "I very much disagree with the idea that the technique of the dancers is so much better now. I think it's just different." - The Age (Melbourne)

In Kyrgyzstan, Using Traditional Dance To Treat Lung Disease

"Every day on the respiratory ward at one of (Bishkek's) biggest hospitals, nurse Aidai Temiraly kyzy puts on the music and leads her patients in the Kara Jorgo, the national dance. ...  The session is part of a treatment programme offered to people with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease." - The Guardian

The Savannah Bananas, The Dancingest Team in Baseball

The players have their moves; the half-time dance team is a troupe of grannies; the ushers and umpires dance; the first-base coach is a professional hip-hop dancer.  The Bananas, a fave on TikTok with 2.5 million followers, are the rare collegiate baseball team with a national following. - The New York Times

How Choreographers Are Adapting The Dance Films They Made During Quarantine For Live Performance

"What goes into transforming a work from screen to stage? What gets added, lost or modified? Pointe spoke with three choreographers to learn what made the process challenging and interesting." - Pointe Magazine

How Pacific Northwest Ballet Is Progressing With Diversity

“The company is more racially diverse today than it was in 2020, when about 30% of the company was BIPOC. Racial identity should only be identified by the individual, but the company is currently about 45% individuals of color with five dancers identifying as Black or Brown." - Seattle Times

Can Newcomers To Dance Follow What Happens In A Story Ballet?  Christopher Wheeldon Isn’t Worried

"I don't think we should be afraid of tackling complex stories and not feeling like the audience has to understand every second; one of the beauties of dance is that we get to escape into this poetic abstraction, even within a story ballet." - The Guardian

Bèlè, Martinique’s Very Own Dance Of Emancipation

An Afro-Caribbean repertoire of quadrille square dances (accompanied by drumming and singing) that combines a complicated vocabulary of symbolic movements with improvisation, bèlè is seeing a revival on the island after long years of discouragement by a central government in Paris keen to promote continental French culture. - The Conversation

The New Energy Behind Street Dance

“Dancing is a form of escapism for some of us,” Diamond Hardiman, a 28-year-old dancer from Chicago, tells me. “So it’s about being real and honest, yes. But at the end of the day it’s also about being tough. You know, like, solid. And being free.” - Mic

Juilliard’s Dean Of Dance Has Been Shepherding Through Some Big Changes

"Four years ago, Alicia Graf Mack — a former star of Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey — took the reins of the dance division, with plans to usher in an altogether more diverse experience. The pandemic, alongside changing conversations around race and gender, shifted that evolution into high gear." - Vanity Fair

ABT’s Incoming Director Could “Quietly Blow Up The Entire Way We Think About Ballet”

"Susan Jaffe, who recently turned 60, has in mind such steps as opening up artistic processes to the public and soliciting views from balletgoers and other stakeholders on the delicate task of updating thorny works from the classical canon. It's an audience-first approach." - MSN (The Washington Post)

In Los Angeles, A Dance Program For Low Income Kids Continues To Thrive

Everybody Dance LA! is "an almost-too-good-to-be-true program founded more than 20 years ago by a grieving mother who believed that things should not remain unequal — and that you can’t be scared when you’re dancing." - Los Angeles Times

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