Category: dance

Reporter Marcie Sillman talks with a Labanotation expert on how she recorded a ten-minute contemporary duet and with dance historian Doug Fullington on using 19th-century Stepanov and Justement notation to reconstruct Giselle. (text and audio)

Marina Harss visits with the 42-year-old Spaniard ahead of his final performance with New York City Ballet, where he has spent 15 years.

“They come from different backgrounds and take in a wide range of influences – from ballet, contemporary dance, physical theatre, Stanislavski and method acting, krumping and popping, contact improvisation. But they all lean towards political engagement, which gives a hint of what might be to come.”

The participating cohort organizations are 20 major ballet companies and one school: American Ballet Theatre, Atlanta Ballet, Ballet Austin, Ballet Memphis, Boston Ballet, Charlotte Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Miami City Ballet, Nashville Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, New York City Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Richmond Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, School of American Ballet, Texas Ballet Theater and The Joffrey Ballet.

“Pantsula took its early influences predominantly from tap dance, with traces of jive, gumboot, tribal African dance and everyday gestures like dice-rolling. … Sixty years on, [it] still thrives in townships across South Africa, but its character and style have morphed in line with the lives of the people who cultivated it.”

“The Richard Alston Dance Company, which has played an important role in British dance, will close in spring 2020, the company announced on Monday. Since the company’s inception in 1994, it has been resident at The Place, a contemporary dance center and performance space in north London where Mr. Alston, 70, has been the artistic director, also since 1994.”

Dancer Teresa Reichlen’s delivered a speech at a company gala. Her point — her whole speech — should become part of the search committee’s criteria in choosing a successor to Mr. Martins. It should also become an ultimatum to the company’s board about the Martins legacy.

“The doctor didn’t know to what degree the hip injury was when I went into the surgery. And a one-and-a-half-hour, two-hour surgery ended up being a four-hour surgery. And after the surgery, I was – I couldn’t weight-bear for two months. I was on crutches for two months. And I was very often in a machine that kept my – the circulation going in my leg so that we could try to build new cartilage, grow new cartilage. So I did the best I could do to rehabilitate myself and got back slowly and still had troubles and tried to figure it out. Nine months later, I got back on stage and then performed a few more months. And then I retired from the New York City Ballet.”

“Amid [its current] turmoil, the company faces an artistic challenge: The sudden dearth of experienced ballet masters who worked with Balanchine.” (Many of them had been kept away from the company by Balanchine’s successor, the just-retired Peter Martins.) “Now it’s not just the dancers who need coaches, but also a new generation of ballet masters, including Rebecca Krohn, Glenn Keenan, Craig Hall and Jonathan Stafford.” So Stafford has brought in Patricia McBride, Edward Villella, and Mimi Paul, all of whom worked closely with Mr. B. Gia Kourlas watches them at work in the studio.

“There was also concern — even among some women — that two of the men might have been unfairly treated. … But as more details of the texting allegations emerged in a lawsuit, a number of women in the company made it clear to management that they would not feel comfortable dancing with those men again.” Among the details: what exactly Amar Ramasar texted that got him in hot water, more trouble caused (and disciplinary action received) by Chase Finlay, and a vicious anonymous note left at the stage door that said “stop believing the word of jilted whores” (and that’s just what was printable).