Category: dance

What if composers, instead of translating into music what they see in dance and dancers, could build scores directly from their own bodies? Dancers master the art of embodying existing music in such a way as to reach and affect their audience. How much more of an impact could work be when dancers can literally craft the score to their movements?

“The decision to relieve [Kenneth] Greve of his managerial role followed accusations by some dancers that Greve had engaged in inappropriate conduct, including comments about their appearance or on matters relating to their private lives. … Greve will continue as a director until the end of his contract on 31 July.”

“The low status of dance in schools is derived in part from the high status of conventional academic work, which associates intelligence mainly with verbal and mathematical reasoning. The studies collected by Nielsen and Burridge explore how a deeper understanding of dance challenges standard conceptions of intelligence and achievement and show the transformative power of movement for people of all ages and backgrounds. Dance can help restore joy and stability in troubled lives and ease the tensions in schools disrupted by violence and bullying.”

“Such groups are expanding their structures and missions, but for the successful artists who built them decades ago, doing so means making major changes to the way they’ve always operated. For some, it means passing the baton. The best-case scenarios emerge with input from the one person—the founder—who usually (and understandably) doesn’t want to talk about her own mortality. Still, avoiding the problem only increases the risk that one’s work will no longer be performed and philanthropic supporters will walk away.”

“The F-word isn’t usually used to describe a dance by Merce Cunningham. But after Rashaun Mitchell watched members of the Stephen Petronio Company rehearse the sextet from Signals, a rarely performed Cunningham dance from 1970, he went there.”

“Alexandre Paulikevitch is one of the few male baladi dancers in the Middle East. He learned how to dance from watching Egypt’s black and white movies and now performs as a soloist, challenging his audiences to think differently about baladi – not only as a post-colonial dance that’s distant from ‘belly-dancing’ or ‘danse orientale’ but as a dance that men and women alike can perform. … We went to his class in Beirut to find out what he’s doing to revolutionise this Eastern dance.” (video)”

“The mayor, Mohammad Ali Najafi, attended a celebration last week amounting to an Islamic version of Mother’s Day. There he encountered six [grade-school-aged] girls dancing in traditional costumes and throwing the rose petals in honor of a female saint.” Islamist hardliners were predictably outraged: said one mullah: “One cannot argue that these were children. They were young girls who incited arousal. They made the most atrocious movements. This cannot be justified.”

“Vania Masías vividly remembers the first time she saw acrobats somersaulting at a traffic light on a visit to her home city in 2004. She was at the peak of an illustrious career as a ballet dancer in Europe – but before long, she would leave it all behind it to nurture the raw talent she found in the streets of [Lima,] the Peruvian capital.”

This isn’t new; once digital designs became possible, and embroidery machines could run all day and night, the costumes had to step it up to match. The early days of change were harsh: “Irish dancing solo costumes went through a very bad period in the early 2000s. …There were feathers, animal prints. It was almost like the more gaudy you could make it, the better.” Now it’s all Swarovski crystals, and “classic Celtic patterns are once again in style, just a lot more blinged out, blindingly so.”

Erdem Moralioglu’s company is famous for its evening gowns and “decadent craftsmanship.” How will he work with dancers at the Royal Ballet in London?