"This last year, with the pandemic and its disruptions in terms of routine, discipline, just ordinary day-to-day activities, the body doesn't know itself at the moment. So I can't tell you what I can ask it to do until I refamiliarize myself. And I'm in the process of doing that. … Whenever I've finished one of these big projects,...
"These small clubs, called tablaos, have acted as a springboard for generations of flamenco artists in Spain to launch professional careers. … But that intimate setup, designed to pack the audience close to the stage, has left most tablaos unable to reopen even after Spain lifted its most severe pandemic lockdown restrictions last summer. The situation has created an...
"Today's ballet teachers and company directors know that they can no longer simply instruct their dancers to lose weight. But that doesn't mean they've relinquished their rigid, narrow vision of what a 'good' ballet body looks like: They simply swathe that ideal in the gauzy, feel-good messaging of today's fitness culture." Or they use the aesthetic ideal of "length"...
Billy Bell, who is a visual spectacle designer and computer engineer as well as a dancer and choreographer, combines movement, architecture and computer code to create fire-and-fountain displays for the likes of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. ""When you're choreographing on a fountain, the equipment itself is your dancer," he says. "However, that dancer, that equipment, is fixed in...
" are preparing for the Italian Championships in Rimini in July and as such are allowed to keep practicing, given that the government considers their activity in the national interest. It's the same allowance that has enabled other federally recognized competitive athletes to keep training in Italy even during the latest round of virus-related closures." - AP
"In much of the dance world, the process of becoming successful as a choreographer can seem frustratingly oblique. On Broadway, however, that path is surprisingly linear and well defined. Most people end up following a sequence of positions that includes becoming dance captain of a show, then assistant choreographer, then associate choreographer and, finally, main choreographer. What boosts you...
Mya Johnson is 15 and Chris Cotter is 13 - and they're Black. A white TikTok influencer took their dance, and other viral dances from the site, to Jimmy Fallon ... without any credit for the choreographers. A comparison of the influencer's "challenge" and the kids' dance moves went just as viral. Cotter, at 13, is gracious about it...
Good old-fashioned letters, it turns out. Choreographer and educator Suchi Branfman has been running her Dancing Through Prison Walls project with inmates of the California Rehabilitation Center at Norco since 2016. She was not going to let the pandemic make her abandon her students, but they didn't have access to Zoom. So they started writing to each other. Garnet...
Ballet is often seen as the glorification of women -but, wherever it stands now, it condoned and encouraged the sexual trafficking of women for most of its history: a factor to which no history of ballet has given enough attention. - Alastair Macaulay
“We were demonstrating that we were still there, that we were still dancing, that we still wanted to dance, that we were still those people that engage in practices that are not Zoom-able, and that the things that we offer the world are not essential. We’re demonstrating that our bodies are these things that are meaty and fleshy and...
In most places, the pandemic has put a stop to large-scale corps dancing. Yet, even when the virus is finally under control, there's reason to wonder about the future of large groups of ballet dancers beyond revivals of old classics: few contemporary choreographers make use of more than small groups. Laura Cappelle looks at why that is and why...
"Western classical ballet is still a very unfamiliar art form in India. But in the last few years, promising talent has begun emerging, often in dancers from disadvantaged or working-class families with no prior association with Western classical music or dance." And one particular instructor in Mumbai has made a huge difference. - Pointe Magazine
"Now, against all odds, programs are rising from the ashes to bring you meaningful training and performance opportunities both in person and online. We asked four prominent competition/convention directors to give you the inside scoop on what to expect from this season. … First: Things are going to be OK." - Dance Spirit
"Planning and executing a virtual season in the midst of a pandemic presents many challenges, not least how to stream or record original programming at a technically polished standard without going beyond the confines of the studio. That problem has now been solved with the retrofitting of the largest studio, called Prima, as, in effect, a well-equipped television studio."...
Monica Thomas: "I spent time watching the robots move to get a sense of joint flexibility, etc. I then made a dance on my body to act out each part. I hired dancers to learn this choreography, which allowed it to be put together in one sequence for filming. I gave a video of the whole dance to Boston...
