Serious choreographers, pandemic, cruise ship? Yes: "The creative team has plunged into the challenges of making a work at sea as part of a large corporate enterprise." - The New York Times
"If you see 45 gestures, made independently, strung together with various musicality and rhythms, against a beautiful song, and then the same gestures juxtaposed to a speech about civil rights, are they the same gestures? And I say they are and they are not." - Time
No, Richard Branson's grownups-only cruise line chose three choreographers from The Dance Cartel. The trio couldn't believe that a cruise ship wanted their avant-garde-dance-meets-house-party aesthetic, which they didn't water down for auditions. Now they're doing on the high seas what they'd do in Brooklyn. - The New York Times
“Despite teaching seven classes a week, I was ineligible for health benefits. I had no job security and no time to look for other work. … If we lose our bodies to injury or exhaustion, we lose our ability to make money or artistic work." - Dance Magazine
In Singin’ in the Rain, the late Clive James felt he encountered “the absolute concentration of an entire popular culture at its most powerful.” As for Kelly, James said, “it took the whole of America, including all its modern history, to create one of him.” - The American Scholar
Western Australia has had only one new COVID case in 30 days, and, at least when resource prices are high, the state has money for the arts. So the West Australian Ballet in Perth has added seven full-time corps positions to its roster of 32 dancers. - Limelight (Australia)
"The dancer, identified only as Jane Doe 100, is one of five female dancers who say Mitchell Taylor Button and his wife, former Boston Ballet principal dancer Dusty Button, 'exploited their position of power and influence in the dance world to sexually abuse young dancers.'" - The Boston Globe
"(Two recent almunae) gathered 13 written testimonials from students and faculty members about what they see as the harmful culture at the U's ballet program. They detailed their experiences being forced to work through injuries, being body-shamed, verbally abused and facing microaggressions." - KUER (Salt Lake City)
The Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas-Little Rock formally voted last week to eliminate the school's BA in dance. A formerly tenured professor in the department is reaching out to other campuses. - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
The case, to be tried next spring in Antwerp, "stems from complaints by 20 dancers from his company who in 2018 alleged … a toxic work environment where sexual acts became an exchange for performance time and where 'humiliation was our daily bread'." - Yahoo! (AFP)
The former company shut down in March after 25 years, but five of its dancers, with one colleague and choreographer Ben Needham-Wood, have formed Dance Aspen, just now giving its first performance. Here the executive director and a company member discuss what they've learned so far. - Pointe Magazine
Edward Watson was a very promising student, but the gangly ginger never fit the handsome-Prince mold. As he retires after 27 years with the company, 16 of them as principal, his astounding flexibility and dramatic intensity have created a new model for male ballet stars. - Dance Magazine
May 21, 1933: "Shanghai had never seen an evening like this before, with Chinese and Western performers all working together." - Los Angeles Review Of Books
Luke Jennings: "His behaviour (was) egregious and exploitative, but his is not an isolated case. It is symptomatic of a culture I have seen up close over many years that shaped and enabled him, that allowed for his own exploitation as a young man." - London Review of Books
