So why do dancers have to look the same, skinny and tall? ”This new model of dancer based on zero body fat – somehow it’s captured the complete imagination of the ballet directors. This sounds like how people used to talk about the stewardesses in the ’50s.” Boston Globe
Author: Douglas McLennan
DANCE WITH ME
Should all kids have access to dance classes meant to lead a student to dance’s professional ranks? The issue is brought up in San Francisco where a mother charges her 8-year-old daughter was rejected by the San Francisco Ballet School because she has a “short, athletic body” that doesn’t fit the classical ballet ideal. The New York Times (one-time registration required for access)
EXTREME DANCE
What does it mean to be a contemporary dancer? “Traditional” contemporary dance is changing and “idealized images of the body are increasingly being replaced with new models of what is dance and what is a dancer. Contemporary dance has been increasing “investigations into the avant-garde by employing people who openly defy expectations.” The Globe & Mail (Canada)
NIJINSKY’S MAGIC
What was it about Vaslav Nijinsky that he so mesmerized the world – “that he should have inspired so many books, films, plays and pieces of artwork? He belonged in ballet’s rarefied circles, yet during his career he captured popular imagination across the world. Fifty years after his death he still does. The Independent (London)
BEATLE FASCINATION
Thirty-something years after they were at the peak of their game, the Beatles are again topping the music charts. But just as they were coming into their own, all those years ago, it was already time for the band to break up. – New York Review of Books
MAD ABOUT MARTHA
Martha Graham may be dead, and her company defunct. But Richard Move recreates the dance diva in drag. “He describes his dances as ‘Cliffs Notes versions’ that use none of Graham’s copyrighted material but evoke its essence. ‘She has an evening-length Clytemnestra. I do a 10-minute version where I eliminate the minor characters and just go right for the love triangle and the murders’.” Village Voice
TURNING 50 IN POOR HEALTH
The English National Ballet celebrates its 50th anniversary this week, but all is not well at Britain’s second largest ballet company. “It doesn’t have the money to stage the kind of ballets that would bring it greater artistic adventure – and greater critical acclaim.” Not to mention that Derek Deane, the company’s artistic director since 1993, has finally given up on pleading for more funds and is leaving at the close of the season. The Times (London)
UNBERABLE LIGHTNESS OF DANCING
Choreographers Seth Riskin and Mia Keinanen have developed a new form of dance. “When I am onstage, I’m not really being a gymnast, and I’m not really being a dancer, either. I have no dance training. I am a light dancer, which is something different. It’s not just the movement of the body, it’s the movement of the space as well, since the light defines all of the space around me.” Boston Herald
POINTING FINGERS
Why are so many people in the museum world hurling insults at Guggenheim Director Thomas Krens, who has overseen some of the museum’s most successful shows to date, as well as its opening of Bilbao and planned projects all over the world? “To hear some people tell it, the museum world hasn’t seen anything like this since Napoleon ransacked Europe to fill the galleries of the Louvre.” – Forbes
GRAHAM DANCE SCHOOL OPENING
The Martha Graham Company may be dead but the Martha Graham Contemporary Dance Center is opening a new school this month. No, that doesn’t mean the disputes between the Graham heir and the Center’s leadership have been sorted out. New York Times 01/01/01 (one-time registration required for access)