Category: dance

As the former Citie Ballet – now Ballet Edmonton – takes a name change the company will also start a new partnership with the Fine Arts & Communications Faculty at MacEwan University involving a performance space and other possible collaborations. Finally, Ballet Edmonton has announced that one of Canada’s most acclaimed choreographers Wen Wei Wang will take over as its new artistic director for the 2018-2019 season.

“It’s an inevitability to keep dancing — a continuance of never questioning the passion and love for the art. What I do question is how to get the work out to others as the sharing of the work has become increasingly difficult.”

“American Ballet Theatre [has] announced a new initiative to foster the development of choreography by company members and freelance dancemakers. Aptly titled ABT Incubator, the program, directed by principal David Hallberg, will give selected choreographers the opportunity to spend two weeks workshopping new dances.” (This is not to be confused with ABT Women’s Movement, the program to develop work by female choreographers that was announced last month.)

“Under the trees near the Metropolitan Opera House on a warm afternoon, [NYCB’s Russell Janzen talked with Marina Harss] about writing, his love of ballet — as well as his doubts about it — the performance of gender and sexual preference onstage, and the increasing number of outside projects he’s taking on.”

“According to the company, total attendance in 2017-2018 exceeded 100,000 patrons, with ticket revenue surpassing $7.7 million. The Joffrey says this represents an 11% increase from the previous year.”

Company dancer Janel Meindersee, who teaches Glissade, the class tailored to wheelchair-users: “We teach a lot of the same things as a normal ballet class — how to spot your head when you move, the quality of arm movements, how to count music and how to stay in line when dancing together.”

“On Wednesday afternoon, Aran Bell, at just 19, makes an important debut: as Romeo in Kenneth MacMillan’s production of Romeo and Juliet. At Ballet Theater, such a leap for a relatively unknown dancer is rare. Dancers wait — and sometimes really wait — for a featured variation in a full-length ballet. But a lead like Romeo? It’s as if Ballet Theater plucked a page from the casting manual of New York City Ballet, which often throws young dancers into principal parts.”

Joseph Carman: “where are the great prima donna roles of the 21st century? Many of today’s top choreographers concoct ballets with impressive corps de ballets that form dizzying, computer-graphic-like patterns. Numerous male and female soloists grab the audience’s attention and then disappear back into the group. … But are they quick to spotlight those juicy ballerina roles? Not really. To many current choreographers, building a ballet around just one commanding female dancer feels like a moth-eaten method of choreographing. To others, it feels too restrictive.”

James Whiteside, who’s also a pop singer, creates the podcast The Stage Rightside. It’s “one of the most unabashed glimpses behind the curtain of a major American ballet company. During the American Ballet Theatre’s spring performances at the Metropolitan Opera House, Whiteside took listeners backstage as he dove into the ballet season, training an equal spotlight on dancers and those who do not necessarily perform, but are in the dance company.”