Category: dance

“Choreographers have tended to avoid Mozart’s music when making dances, for fear their steps will look trivial in comparison. … There is a lingering sense that dance, which involves physical bodies subject to the laws of gravity and propelled by muscle, will somehow drag down the music’s graceful architecture. … Ridiculous! says Mr. Morris.”

Gia Kourlas: “Fred Astaire, as the famous saying goes, may have been a great dancer, but Ginger Rogers did everything he did – only backward and in high heels. At least she had gravity on her side. Synchronized swimmers often perform upside-down and without air.”

“[Pedro Pablo Peña] came to Miami in 1980 on the Mariel Boatlift. … Over the years, he has gained a reputation for running a safe haven for Cuban dancers when they touch down in America. ‘They are able to continue their career in the United States. I offer to help with everything.’ Peña gives them a spot in his Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami or helps them contract with other companies. He also provides housing and a surrogate family for those with no local relatives.”

Specialists in four genres – Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathak, and Mohiniattam – offer demonstrations of their art. (videos)

“‘It was a very easy decision,’ [Andrew] Daly said, surprising even himself, as he’d expected to dance for another 10 years. ‘I knew that if I stayed another year that I would’ve been emotionally completely destroyed.'”

“The pair reportedly had been fighting in their apartment in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx. After the fight, Bellamy reportedly contacted a neighbor, who called police. Bellamy was waiting for them and surrendered peacefully.”

“I’m venturing to bet if there was a Lip Sync Battle between [Britney Spears] and a Broadway dancer, the Broadway dancer would kick her ass.”

“There’s not a single game made with ballet dancers in the past so many years — why is that? … How many other ideas haven’t been used?”

“Every dancer knows, soon enough, that standing still is remarkably more tiring, and painful, than moving. The blood pools in your feet and lower legs, which swell and throb. And when you are in the corps de ballet and learning new choreography, you spend much more time standing in the back of a studio than you do dancing. The cursed burden of being an understudy.”

“This is my last column as The Spectator‘s dance spectator. It’s been the deepest pleasure to wander on your behalf around the fertile landscape of dance, but I’m off to Oxford University to do some research. Thank you for bearing with my thoughts and I hope you bought a few tickets as a result.”