Category: dance

The hugely popular opera festival at the Arena di Verona is, like almost all Italian opera houses, in deep financial trouble: it nearly went into liquidation last spring, until Rome sent a turnaround specialist to the rescue. Last week, as a cost-cutting measure, the 19 dancers of the festival’s ballet company were laid off – despite the fact that their shows regularly sell out. (in Italian; Google Translate version here)

With a sharp, if veiled, rebuke – “the Opéra has been working for several months to define a new balance between reduced resources and ambitious artistic activity … [an effort] which assumes commitment, trust, and close collaboration” – the board president of the Opéra national de Bordeaux has suspended Charles Jude, the house’s director of ballet. The action follows months of dispute over how to allocate dwindling state funding and whether or not to fill vacant positions in the corps de ballet. (in French; Google Translate version here)

“While the advantages  –  including physical conditioning and the instillment of such welcome habits as discipline and cooperation – are clear, so are the dangers.” (For instance, the increased risk of eating disorders.) “That suggests dance training may produce or exacerbate some less-than-healthy psychological pressures. New research from Portugal finds evidence of just such a dynamic among young ballet students.”

“It came as something of a shock, one night in January, when people high on the corkscrew ramp of the Guggenheim Museum’s spiral rotunda started beating on the balustrade with sticks.” (includes video)

“For this piece, the first that the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim has commissioned for the rotunda (as opposed to the museum’s theater), the interior architecture serves not just as a stage for movement but also as a musical instrument. Those sticks were tuned plastic tubes known as Boomwhackers. The performers were drumming a melody.”

“This is just the sort of science story that shimmies to the top of newsfeeds. That is to say, it’s of little consequence, and it’s very likely wrong. Those two traits aren’t unrelated.” Daniel Engber gives us the debunking.

“Similar to many sports, ballet involves discipline and physical demands, competitiveness, highly critical and perfectionistic attitudes of trainers, and acceptance of emotional and physical suffering.” It’s easy to see how that could inspire students to cut themselves off from negative emotions in the moment — a process that can allow fears to accumulate, and ultimately build into serious anxiety.

In The Sleeping Beauty, Mearns usually dances the Lilac Fairy, Princess Aurora’s protector – but she’s just performed Carabosse, the evil fairy, for the first time. Mearns talks to Gia Kourlas about how she approached the new role.

David Bintley of Birmingham Royal Ballet: “I have lived, performed and managed dance within a generation that has, to a large extent, accepted arts funding by government as more of a right than a privilege. This financial safety net has been slowly but surely disappearing and the bald fact is: it’s not going to come back.”