Author: Douglas McLennan

Canada’s National Ballet posts a small “symbolic” surplus for the year despite declines in funding and donations. “The company’s accumulated deficit of $4-million almost exactly matches what the National Ballet has lost through cutbacks in Ontario government funding.” National Post 10/18/01

Scottish Ballet company members are contractually prohibited from publicly criticizing the company. But the dancers are furious about management’s decisions to turn the company into a modern company, so they started a website with a forum where they discussed their unhappiness. After the company threatened the website managers, saying “that some of the content was defamatory and should be removed,” the offending comments were deleted. The Scotsman 10/17/01.

American Ballet Theater has suffered under a series of managerial woes and money woes. Tuesday ABT appointed Wallace Chappell, 60 as its new executive director. Chappell is “the director of the Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa since 1986, who has also held ranking staff positions with the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Alliance Theater in Atlanta and the Repertory Theater of St. Louis.” The New York Times 10/17/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Oakland Ballet is struggling. Last weekend’s performance was “a disappointing affair that brings the company’s recent struggles painfully to light. After hiring a new artistic director last year, Karen Brown, the company has been trying to knit together a mostly new group of performers and to fill its ranks with enough qualified male dancers, all on a shoestring budget. It’s a big job, no doubt, but the results Sunday were dismal.” San Jose Mercury News 10/17/01

“Willam Farr Christensen, a Utah dancer who started on the vaudeville stage and went on to become one of the most important figures in American ballet, died Sunday. He was 99.” Dallas Morning News (AP) 10/17/01

“Despite incurring a disastrous $459,626 deficit in their 2000-01 season, Alberta Ballet officials asserted that the past season was a success Friday at their annual general meeting.” Calgary Herald 10/13/01

“American modern dance, a genre spawned and nurtured by women over the last century, has also produced a proliferation of extraordinary male dancers in the last decade. Wider public acceptance of men entering the dance field, the fostering of versatility among dancers and the accessibility to better training across America have produced discernible results. More men in contemporary dance have stronger techniques, dance with refined musicality and possess a more mature artistry than ever before.” The New York Times 10/14/01 (one-time registration required for access)

“The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is in the red after three years of financial surpluses. In the mid 1990’s, it managed to clear a debt of $900,000. But at a meeting Wednesday evening, the company announced it lost almost $170,000 last season, leaving a new deficit of $158,000.” CBC 10/12/01

Choreographer Twyla Tharp and rock-star-turned-classical-composer Billy Joel are collaborating on a show which likely will open on Broadway next year. One thing they might want to change is the name. “The Thoel Project” just doesn’t trip lightly on the tongue. New York Post 10/10/01

Chunky Move sounds like a gangsta rap group. Actually, it’s an Australian dance company. But the name isn’t altogether inappropriate, with “works that critics have described as ‘dangerous,’ ‘ugly’ and ‘uncomfortable.” Or you can get a hint from titles of the two works in the American debut this week – “Crumpled” and “Corrupted 2” International Herald Tribune 10/10/01