Category: dance

“Since Cunningham revivals largely depend on dancers’ understanding of his style, the disbanding of the company [at the end of 2011] seemed like a farewell to Cunningham dance theater. The End. But … a Cunningham diaspora has now emerged. Former dancers teach his technique in America, Britain, France and elsewhere. Exciting young Cunningham dancers have surfaced. Important revivals of a large number of his works have occurred in several countries.”

Someone’s got to heal this divided citizenry. Dance can do this and a nationally televised show presents an ideal platform. The Rockettes shouldn’t perform for Trump (like my friend was forced to dance for Putin), but rather for his supporters. That said, no artist should ever be asked to “tolerate intolerance”; they have a responsibility to challenge it.

The 1980s really are back: “”‘I used to be kinda nerdy,’ said Luke Yi Hao, a former violin prodigy who works in biomedical engineering and started taking weekly classes at PMT last fall. The 28-year-old’s colleagues enjoy fencing and salsa dancing, but Hao turned to break dancing because, he said, ‘it looked cool.'”

“The Red Detachment of Women, which was adapted from a 1961 film of the same name, was based on the true experience of an all-female Special Company of the Red Army during the Chinese Civil War. They survived a brutal attack on Hainan Island while their male counterparts did not, and were honored by Mao himself.”

Seeing this story, we can finally understand what Reynolds meant when she said that, excepting childbirth, her big number in Singin’ in the Rain was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life. (includes video)

Remember when early January was basically a post-Christmas lull in the performing arts season? Those days are over: now it’s not uusual for a dancer to perform in three completely different works for different companies within 24 hours. “The reason – or the culprit, some might say – is the phenomenon known as APAP.”

Jenice Armstrong, on Sara Michelle Murawski’s dismissal from Pennsylvania Ballet because, at 5’11”, she’s too tall: “Murawski’s dancing abilities don’t appear to be in question. So if ballet officials had an issue with a tall dancer, why woo her here? Now that she’s finally here and performing beautifully, she gets a hard toe shoe up her backside, because they apparently don’t like the idea of a tall female looming over shorter male dancers.”

Yeah, it’s the city that throws garbage at their own team as well as at the opponents, that has a courtroom and jail in the sports stadium, that beat up a sidewalk Santa (okay, okay, that was a generation ago), that decapitated a friendly hitchhiking robot. In Philadelphia last week, Pennsylvania Ballet told a principal, about an hour before she went onstage, that this would be her last season there because she’s just too tall. (It’s a tough town.)

“David Hallberg, the American Ballet Theater principal dancer, who has been sidelined by injury for the last two and a half years, is returning to the company and planning to perform during its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House.”