Category: dance

“Since NYCB preserves its Balanchine legacy by keeping everything in house – dancers are hired almost exclusively from [the School of American Ballet], where they are trained by former members of the company – the school is a logical place to start transforming its image. And it’s working. Presently, the children’s division and intermediate/advanced division boasts 44% and 29% students of color, respectively.”

The semi-autobiographical dance-theater piece Funkedified “reaches back to the music that 53-year-old Harris grew up in North Philly in the 1970s, when funk, psychedelia, and later dance-club music fatefully collided.”

“Is it Pina Bausch’s raw examinations of everyday life? Is it performance that mixes movement and text? Is it dance that tells a story? Dance Magazine talked with four choreographers who use elements of dance and theater – but whose work escapes easy categorization – about playing with narrative, integrating movement and words, and what ‘dance theater’ means to them.”

Marina Harss talks with Clifton Brown, who spent 13 years with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater before leaving to dance with Lar Lubovitch and Jessica Lang and is just now returning to the Ailey fold.

“Sara Mearns, wearing rehearsal clothes she wouldn’t normally wear – a purple chiffon Grecian dress – turned to Lori Belilove to ask a question she wouldn’t normally ask as a principal at New York City Ballet. Her brow narrowed in concentration: ‘We decided I would come on like the wind?'”

“Dancers are used to communicating with their bodies. But they can forget how much they rely on verbal cues until the directions are spoken in a different language.” Nevertheless, it can be done; Garnet Henderson offers four hints for how to manage it.

“Three pairs of dancers, two in New York and one in India, share their experiences finding mutual balance in a physically challenging medium.”

“[Elizabeth] Warshawer’s most recent high-profile role was as executive vice president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer of the Curtis Institute of Music. She held the post until 2015, overseeing such major initiatives as the development of strategic plans, the launch of major online initiatives, and construction of a new building with dorms and rehearsal spaces. She is currently interim executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington.” Current executive director David Gray leaves this month.

“Former Pacific Northwest Ballet star and current artistic director of Grand Rapids Ballet, Patricia Barker, will become the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s twelfth artistic director and only the second female director in its 64-year history.”

The relationship with Hong Kong Ballet, a company of about 50 dancers, grew out of a planned tour to the territory with the Washington Ballet about three years ago, Septime Webre said. The tour fell through, but later on the agent for the trip alerted Webre to the company’s search for a director. Webre will replace Madeleine Onne, director since 2009.