Category: dance

Luke Jennings: “The problem with Femmes – a new triple-bill from Les Grands Ballets Canadiens – “apart from the sheer, kitsch ghastliness of the concept, is that it epitomises the lack of agency of women in classical dance. The reverence for the feminine implied by Balanchine’s quote [‘Ballet is woman’] has always been contingent on women knowing their place. Ballet relies on women to make up most of its performing workforce, but overwhelmingly reserves positions of artistic power for men.”

He was performing alongside Natalia Osipova in the Royal Ballet’s Giselle in London when he somehow hurt himself (no details were given) early in Act One. While he finished the act, he did not return to the stage after intermission. “Mr. Hallberg returned to the stage just 14 months ago, after a two-and-a-half-year injury-filled break and a painful, painstaking fight back to physical prowess. (Dancing with Ms. Osipova again, he has said, was one of his strongest motivations.)”

Supply and demand is one thing, but it’s heartbreaking to hear that lousy conditions follow. Does it have to be that way? The idea of self-value brings me back to the Ailey dancers, and why their disobedience — their independence — is encouraging. As artists elsewhere have been speaking up about their treatment, the Ailey dancers, in their acts of wordless absence, have joined those ranks. Theirs is a story of dancers finding a voice in a very public way, and drawing strength from one another. Dance can be seen as a passive world, until a group of artists boycotts their gala. By spotlighting the economics behind what they do, they reveal another facet of a dancer’s life.

New York’s churches have been home to some pretty radical dance – and dancer/choreography Reggie Wilson wants to bring some of that cross-platform work back to life.

“I think they were really committed to being as accurate as possible, so they wanted a principal dancer, a real ballerina,” Boylston says. “Justin Peck, the choreographer, is a good friend of mine — we had worked together before on our own film that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival a couple of years ago. He called me and was like, ‘I think you’d be a great fit for this project.’ And I was like, Francis Lawrence? Jen Lawrence? Sign me up.”

“I wanted her to understand what muscle groups were involved, and how most people walking on the street are internally rotated with their shoulders — their palms are facing back. With ballet dancers, you have to spin that back so it looks more like their arms are an extension of their back, and that whole alignment lengthens your neck. It widens your shoulder line.”

The former Royal Ballet star and current artistic director of English National Ballet has been catching some flack for her romance with principal dancer Isaac Hernández (who’s 16 years younger). SDhe insists there is “not even a possibility” of conflict of interest: “He has won all the awards you can possibly win, so there was nowhere I could promote him.”

“I have commissioned over 60 works, both new and revivals, for the Rambert dancers, who in my opinion have the richest embodied knowledge in the world. This is the beginning of my 16th year as artistic director which is the longest stint of any artistic director of this company, and I think it is the perfect moment to hand over. I arrived as a choreographer and my heart tells me it is time to return to that,” he said.