Category: dance

These are not dances with deep spiritual meanings, but rather they’re the most prolific forms of creative expression for young Africans right now. That has since evolved into a professionalization of these dances, as tutorial videos crop up on these very dances and professional choreographers increasingly incorporate them.

Copeland says she feels lucky, and like her success is almost unbelievable – but she wants some compatriots at the top. “She is adamant that a large part of her purpose as a public figure is to make sure up-and-coming black and brown dancers know they belong in the world of classical ballet – and feel welcome there.”

The surprise successor will be 35-year-old Michael Novak, who has been with the company since 2010. For Novak, “the appointment came out of nowhere. Just after the company’s Lincoln Center season ended in March, he went to Mr. Taylor’s apartment for a meeting. ‘Paul said, ‘I have been thinking a long time and I have decided that you’re going to be the one to take over the company once I buzz off,’’ Mr. Novak said. ‘I don’t think ‘shocked’ even begins to describe the feeling.'”

It’s still tough for women choreographers to get their work into our prominent dance companies. But one company just announced a major new initiative. Not a surprise; the work of women choreographers is by now built into the company’s DNA.

Deborah Jowitt: “Robbins wanted dancers to approach classical steps as if rising onto pointe was no more unusual than an intake of breath, and a turn could seem a giddy impulse (no showing a planted preparation to spin as if it were interesting in itself). … He came down hard on artificiality and dancers who played to the audience. He wanted them to look ‘real’ despite their virtuosity, to see and react to the others onstage. If a plot was involved, he might want a dancer to know what his/her character had eaten for dinner the night before.”

“Showcasing dance, without the audience’s necessarily seeing it, is [blind performer and choreographer Mana] Hashimoto’s life’s work. Her performances and workshops bring dance, a medium with a strong visual component, to those without sight while also providing a new experience for a sighted audience.”

Toby Ansin, a South Florida philanthropist who founded the company in the 1980s with Villella says she just wants to write up the story of her life as it happened. Villella, who signed a reciprocal non-disparagement agreement with the MCB board as part of a settlement after he was forced out as the company’s artistic director in 2012, is not going along with what he sees as an attempt to escape that agreement.

Third year students, who were halfway through a tour of England and Wales when the van was taken, launched an appeal to find the costumes and raise money to replace other items in the van, which included lighting, sound and rehearsal equipment. Last night (May 14), a member of the public found the costumes in an open garage in Bromley-by-Bow in London, close to where the tour vehicle was last tracked, and called Ballet Central to report the news.

“Tap isn’t being used as a dance language here, much less as music. It’s being used as a sparkly outfit, and as a symbol of Broadway’s past. These numbers are fantasies. Two of the new ones are hallucinations.” Brian Seibert on the incongruous tap routines that have been turning up in new and recent shows from Mean Girls to SpongeBob SquarePants to Escape to Margaritaville and back to The Book of Mormon. (Seibert doesn’t entirely approve.)