Category: dance

Alessa Rogers of Atlanta Ballet: “I see you. I know who you are. If you think you are hiding your self-loathing, you are deceiving only yourself. It is time to stop. … Don’t be seduced by the feeling that berating yourself makes you a better artist. I know you are trying to protect yourself by saying self-judgmental things so that it won’t sting if others do. But putting yourself down will not endear you to the people in the front of the studio.”

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been seriously getting into dance lately. But now it’s taking its love affair one step further: Gallim Dance director/choreographer Andrea Miller was just named the museum’s artist in residence for the 2017-18 season – the first dance artist ever chosen for that distinction! We caught up with Miller to find out exactly what this means.”

Brief answers by the three (male) star dancemakers to this question (evidently texted to them after the main conversation recorded in the article was over) – “Most of the major choreographers in classical dance are men. Why is that?” – led to a ferocious response from The Observer‘s Luke Jennings, after which “Twitter went mad.” Courtney Escoyne surveys the battlefield.

“Annie Hanauer, 30, has achieved what many thought impossible for a performer with a disability: a thriving career in the mainstream dance world. After performing with the UK’s Candoco Dance Company from 2008 to 2014, she is now an in-demand freelancer.” (includes video)

Benjamin Millepied’s young company “has signed a five-year lease for its own rehearsal and performance space in the downtown Los Angeles arts district, and will move to its new headquarters in October. [Its space will] include two studios and a performance space with a seating capacity of about 300.

Sara Michelle Murawski made headlines in January after the Pennsylvania Ballet told her (shortly before she went onstage) that her contract wasn’t being renewed because she’s too tall to fit in visually with the company’s other dancers. Now she’s joining the American National Ballet, a new company, launching this fall in Charleston, that’s making a point of engaging gifted dancers of varied physiques and skin tones – and giving them a decent standard of living. (Oddly, neither Charleston City Paper nor The Post & Courier seem to have reported on the ANB yet.)

And the Garment District is even more specialized, and special, than regular consumers know: “Several of his go-to shops won’t ever be seen by the public — they’re tucked onto upper floors of old commercial buildings. But the people who rely on them — Broadway costume designers, theater shoppers, fabric sellers and buyers, fashion designers and more — are all clued in to Choo’s hidden world.”

“The chairman of the ballet’s board of trustees, David Hoffman, said he was sorry the company was losing them but added: ‘I wish them well. People should take opportunities when they get them.'”

Deborah Riley, longtime co-director of Dance Place, steps down in August, and finding the next director is hectic. “‘It’s been my family,’ she acknowledges. But she won’t miss the constant worries that go along with managing morning-to-night classes for adults and children, after-school programs, summer camps, visiting artists and performances nearly every weekend — and always, always, the funding concerns.”

So this is how it started, two decades ago: “Joedy Cook was a 40-something stay-at-home mother in 1996 when she decided the Quad-Cities needed a professional ballet company. She went to the board of directors of the Cassandra Manning Ballet Theatre, where she volunteered at the time, and got the go-ahead. Ballet Quad-Cities kicked off with one paid dancer and a $25,000 budget.”