Dance

And this didn’t happen once, bad as that would have been. The company says “two black dancers had people scream racial epithets at them while driving by, and it happened on two separate occasions last week.” – KSL

“Even in Petit’s home country, his works haven’t been staged with great regularity. Nor do companies seem especially interested in resuscitating any of the dozens of full-length works or shorter ballets he created over the course of a long career. It’s a curious schism: Despite the relative obscurity of much of Petit’s work, he remains much-revered in France, where he is still described as a great choreographer who is pivotal to a French ballet heritage.” – The New York Times

“The Australian Ballet forfeited $32 million [Aus] in ticket revenue [and posted $2.4 million in operating losses] for 2020, a pandemic blow that it has only survived thanks to an outpouring of community and government support, plus a decision to raid its reserves and sell off investments. … It bucks the trend of many other major arts organisations including Victorian Opera, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra which chalked up pandemic profits on the back of continued government funding without the costs of performance.” – The Age (Melbourne)

As one of the very few women to lead a major ballet company, Morgan championed women choreographers long before the rest of the dance world turned its attention to the lack of equity for women in the field. It has not been unusual for more than half of a season’s offerings to be choreographed by women. – Cincinnati Enquirer

“For Lovette, becoming a choreographer was something she grew into. ‘When I was 18 and I had just joined the New York City Ballet and the corps, I remember doing a piece next to Justin Peck … and I thought, ‘That’s a choreographer. I’m not. I’ll just stick to dancing. I don’t think I have what it takes.’ And it was my boss. Peter Martins, who ever since that day thought that my piece was really good, even if I didn’t think so. Every year, in passing, he’d say, ‘She’s a choreographer.'” – Los Angeles Magazine

Patrick Makuakāne understands well the value of the traditional dances passed down through generations. (“I love those little gems. They’re like family heirlooms … they’re very precious and you understand they don’t need to be changed and their inherent value is just the way they are.”) But that doesn’t mean that, in his longtime base of San Francisco, he can’t mix in elements such as electronic music, the Lindy Hop, opera, drag queens, jazz, and Catholic school. – San Francisco Classical Voice

“When asked to describe the energy at this month’s Youth America Grand Prix Finals, judge Sascha Radetsky had one word: ‘Stratospheric.’ More than 800 dancers from around the United States … competed onstage at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa … from May 9 to 16. And after months of cramped kitchen-counter barres and delayed Zoom connections, for many serious ballet students, the opportunity to perform onstage had never felt quite so sweet.” – Dance Magazine

Dancers can spend their whole careers seeking out a rich mind–body connection. Achieving that sense of integration can be incredibly satisfying, leading to better physical and mental health, and a more holistic performance quality. But what happens when that connection goes too far, leading to anxiety or obsession instead of artistic fulfillment? – Dance Magazine

Dancer Jennifer McCloskey first realized her medium was TikTok in 2020, during the shutdown. “On her feed, McCloskey seamlessly blends comedy, criticism of ballet culture, and how-to videos. Her mission is to whittle away at toxic ballet culture one TikTok at a time — all while having a little fun, of course.” – Elite Daily

Kalamandalam Gopi, who’s about to turn 84, has been studying and performing the dance-drama form from the Indian state of Kerala for 70 years, taught generations of performers, and set new standards in the genre’s stage makeup, gestures, and use of facial expressions. To celebrate his 80th birthday, he chose to perform one of the most demanding roles in the entire Kathakali repertoire. – The Hindu (India)

“I danced some fabulous ballets and fabulous roles. And yet there’s hundreds more like me — thousands maybe. We might be exceptional in one way: You reached the top level of your career, and you have these pinnacle moments onstage. But at the end of the day, we’re all a gang. We’re all a crew, we’re all a posse of ballerinas.” – The New York Times

“I’ve realized that my case isn’t just about calling out racism; it’s about confronting all forms of injustice in the dance world. … It’s also been really great to receive messages from dancers of color, and to feel like we’re calling out stereotypes — that our bodies, feet and work ethics aren’t suited for ballet.” – Pointe Magazine

Choreographer Andrea Schermoly, who created this wintry take on Stravinsky’s modernist classic for Louisville Ballet’s online “Season of Illumination”: “I’d seen a short film … about a stray albino penguin that ad been ousted by its tribe. I remember thinking it was such a strange parallel to Rite, and I liked the starkness of the terrain. … The music is so eerie, huge and violent, and I felt like the tribal sense could still be captured in that icy environment.” – Pointe Magazine

“As theaters went dark during the pandemic, the New York-based Whiteside” — best known as a prinmcipal at ABT — “began putting out a flood of original content on Instagram and YouTube: going behind the scenes of his workouts and rehearsals, offering live dance classes, creating comedic skits, and debuting inventive music videos … [all featuring] bombastic online alter egos, such as a singer named JbDubs, drag artist Ühu Betch, and a turkey-baster-wielding journalist called Shannon Bobannon (who ‘fires news like a cannon’).” – Fast Company
05.14.21

If you could see a dance performance inside the theatre (with other masked, socially distanced audience members), outside (same, but less distance), or via your Wi-Fi at home, which would you choose? And how would they stack up? (Hint: The outdoors might be the way to go, at least in the summer.) – The New York Times

“To watch her dance, especially to jazz music, is to watch historical distance collapse. Steps and attitudes separated by eras flow through her improvising body not as some premeditated fusion but as a single language she appears to have always known and yet is creating on the spot. The links are self-evident, unforced, authentic without a hint of the antiquarian. They’re active, present, a live circuit. The revelatory shock can make you laugh out loud.” – The New York Times

“I think anything that you do with every particle of yourself can be wonderful, and it can make you forget the world. It’s magic. How the heck am I supposed to describe it? Something happens. It takes everything you have got. And, for that — for those brief moments that you’re dancing, you’re transported.” – The News Hour (PBS)

“Yat-Sen Chang attacked girls and women at the English National Ballet and Young Dancers Academy in London between December 2009 and March 2016. The 49-year-old was convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. He was cleared of one offence.” – BBC

“Consider Belgian hip-hop artist Angelina Bruno. A star of the European dance circuit whose right arm was amputated at the forearm as a teenager, Bruno dances to The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” with a 3-D–printed arm in the video game Just Dance 2021. The arm (designed in collaboration with Anouk Wipprecht) is a gorgeously faceted spire that glows iridescently within a cyber-futuristic, TRON-like virtual environment.” – Dance Magazine

Mickaella Dantas: “It took me a while to consider working with my prosthesis, since it has a limited range of flexibility. I struggled with resistance and balance, and was frustrated by the way the leg could fall off when I sweat. It causes daily soreness. I didn’t have the self-discipline at first to develop dance movement with it. But when I met the Portuguese choreographer Clara Andermatt in 2012, I knew that I no longer could make these excuses.” – Dance Magazine

Typically, it’s an intermediary—a manager, a producer, a critic—who labels something as “world dance.” The term denotes exoticness, authenticity—and it sells. It’s also problematic and limiting. – Dance Magazine

Sophia Kim, former comptroller for the Kirov Academy in Washington, D.C., “gambled with funds she was overseeing as the academy’s comptroller. Over nine months in 2018, investigators say, Ms. Kim wrote checks to herself and used her academy bank card 120 times to withdraw cash and pay off losses at the MGM Grand Casino near her home in Temple Hills, Md.” – The New York Times

It’s a long history, and a new generation is reviving the art even during the pandemic. – CBS News

Cygnet School, based in Canterbury, “is designed to bridge a gap that Bourne had noticed between young people who excel in dance at a grassroots level and those who are able to proceed with vocational training. ‘A lot of the young people who were coming to us for auditions were quite raw – the talent was there but they weren’t quite ready to go into a professional show. … [They] slip through the net’, said Bourne, particularly if they come from low-income backgrounds.” – The Guardian