Category: dance

Fair question, but: “Whether Corella is shifting the company away from its heritage or not, a larger question hovers: Does it even matter? If the choice is ‘Change or die,’ who cares if the dancing is different? It’s a classic ‘would you rather’ moment: Ballet fans, would you rather have a different-looking company or no company at all?”

Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, launched this past spring by five dancers who left Atlanta Ballet following the arrival of a new artistic director last year, has its organizational structure and early donors lined up, its first performances this month and next, and home venues secured in downtown Atlanta and the suburbs. Where to now? “As the group coalesces,” reports Candice Thompson, “[de facto leader John] Welker expects it will remain a company of five core dancers, performing in-house choreography. But there are plans for growth.”

“After 12 seasons dancing with the Rockettes, Rhonda Kaufman Malkin knows a thing or two about becoming one of Radio City’s iconic dancers. … At the most recent Rockettes callback, over half of the 25 dancers were Malkin’s students – and seven of them were offered contracts. Here’s how to get to Radio City, according to Malkin.”

Sara Michelle Murawski was personally recruited by incoming artistic director Ángel Corella, only to be told – four months into her first season and right before she went onstage as the Sugar Plum Fairy – that her contract would not be renewed because she was too tall for any of the company’s men to partner. (She’s 5’10½”.) She writes here about getting through the shock and disappointment, how her height has and hasn’t been an issue throughout her studies and career, and how she came to headline a new company that’s getting started this year in Charleston.

“Ballet is slower to change than most art forms, but in the span of just two weeks, New York City Ballet, one of the world’s premier companies, will have shown two ballets featuring significant same-sex duets.” Gia Kourlas talks with the choreographers of those ballets, Lauren Lovette and Justin Peck, and the men who’ll be dancing those duets.

Says Pranita Nayar, who has studied the form for decades, “My audience is not from a thousand years ago, so what are we preserving? For whom am I preserving it? … [What’s more,] the bharatanatyam of today is only about 100 years old.”

“The 43-year-old dancer-choreographer” – one of Britain’s most celebrated – “said he would still dance smaller roles and cameos, but the physical rigours of performing solo onstage for more than an hour were becoming too much.”

“From July 2016 to February 2017, directors came and went at five major contemporary dance hubs below 23rd Street: New York Live Arts in Chelsea; Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side; Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University in Greenwich Village; Gibney Dance Center, in TriBeCa and near Union Square; and the temporarily nomadic Performance Space 122 (PS122), whose East Village home, under renovation since 2013, is poised to reopen soon.”

And then there’s the networking of dance groups and individual dancers from across genres. “We want to try and bust open people’s ideas, … to create a container that is peer-based. We want people to say I’m a working artist and you’re a working artist and we’re going to share work.”