Category: dance

Marina Harss asked Farrell, who answered – “enigmatically,” notes Harss – “I don’t really know. If I had my choice I would go on forever.” Kennedy Center representatives, for their part, say only that the facility’s upcoming expansion provides “a natural moment to transition” and that Farrell could “expand her teaching” there after construction is completed.

The continued growth of the company is rare, given what often happens to dance organizations after their founder dies and there is no new repertory to tour. Ms. Brown, part of an influential generation that ushered in postmodern dance — she was an original member of the experimental 1960s collective Judson Dance Theater — was a maverick.

After several seasons of performing to recorded music only due to financial difficulties, the company’s upcoming productions of Romeo and Juliet and Beauty and the Beast will use a live orchestra. “The live music is possible because revenue is beating the ballet’s projections, says board president Jonathan Ledden.”

“Immediate reactions were varied, though emotionally charged. Here are a few of the many responses”

The School of American Ballet said in a statement that it “recently received an anonymous letter making general, nonspecific allegations of sexual harassment in the past by Peter Martins at both New York City Ballet and the school. … Thus far, our investigation has not substantiated the allegations in the letter.” Several former dancers say that “Mr. Martins was known for sleeping with dancers, some of whom received better roles because of their personal relationships with him.”

“It’s understood close to half of the current 36 dancers employed by the national ballet company will have left by the new year, not all by choice – less than six months after a new artistic director took over. It’s the second year in a row the national ballet company … has gone through an artistic upheaval.”

Cali’s salsa culture runs deep – and has a split: “There are the purists, who like to keep their footwork on the ground, the way salsa was first danced in the 1970s. Then there are the more daring — typically younger — provocateurs, who incorporate demanding tricks and lifts frowned upon by traditionalists.”

Sure, there’s a lot of classical ballet in India. “Today, ballet schools are scattered across Delhi and Mumbai, offering professional training and degrees endorsed by foreign maestros. But that is not all. India is making its mark on the international scene by sending its own home-grown ballet dancers to woo the global audiences.”

“New Yorker critic Arlene Croce [once] asserted that the Trocks weren’t addressing gender roles, but ballet roles, an altogether different topic: ‘a ballerina isn’t a woman but an abstraction of one.’ This distinction is politically and analytically useful: It aligns the Trocks squarely with high art, and makes clear that they aren’t – as some critics have said drag does – making fun of women. But it’s also wishfully tidy.”

“Back when Lumberyard was known as the American Dance Institute and operated out of a strip mall in Rockville, Maryland, it pioneered its Incubator program to whip new pieces into shape, kind of like the “out-of-town” tryout model for theater. Several of the artists it supported ultimately brought their shows to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.” Now that the ADI has relocated to the Catskills as Lumberyard, “the partnership is official.”