“This type of dance is particularly brutal. I was the first person to do it for an extended period of time. … I have a lot of friends who are professional athletes, and we like to get together and have a couple of beers and exchange horror stories. I always win.”
Category: dance
Atlanta Ballet Chooses New Artistic Director
“Gennadi Nedvigin, principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet, traveled halfway around the world and spent half a lifetime preparing for his next major debut – in a role he might not have taken, if it hadn’t been for a remarkable experience with dancers of Atlanta Ballet.”
Watch The Alvin Ailey Company On PBS NewsHour
“Robert Battle grew up in one of Miami’s poorest neighborhoods wearing metal braces on his legs but dreaming of dance. Thirty years later, he runs the renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – the very company that inspired him as a child. Battle joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss how dance can transform lives and his vision for the company’s future.”
Dance Directors Share Their Biggest Audition Pet Peeves
The Joffrey Ballet’s Ashley Wheater, Nederlands Dans Theater’s Paul Lightfoot, and Broadway casting director Rachel Hoffman offer some suggestions for what not to do.
Madison Ballet Cancels Remainder Of Season
“This is the second time in recent years that the Overture [Center] resident company has announced shows only to cancel them. Despite a solid showing for Nutcracker in December, the organization has struggled with cash flow, lower than expected ticket sales for Dracula and flagging fundraising.”
Using Dance To Teach Math (It Works)
Teachers call such melding of art and traditional subjects “art integration,” and it’s a new and increasingly popular way of bringing the arts into the classroom. Instead of art as a stand-alone subject, teachers are using dance, drama and the visual arts to teach a variety of academic subjects in a more engaging way.
Marcelo Gomes On Being An Out Gay Ballet Star Whose Roles Are Always Hetero
“He says he doesn’t ever wonder why all the roles for men in ballet are straight – ‘that’s where your acting ability comes in, and when I’m kissing Juliet, I’m not myself” – but it is a little odd that a discipline that outsiders so strongly associate with gay men is built entirely on a canon of straight love stories.”
The Risk Of New Story Ballets
This month, Christopher Wheeldon’s Strapless and Justin Peck’s The Most Incredible Thing got an unusually negative reception. “There’s a similar harshness in the takedowns of these two works (from both critics and audiences) that caught my attention. You don’t typically see such severe reactions to non-narrative works. Why are people so upset by these pieces?” Jennifer Stahl explains.
Add Another Name To The Short List Of Great U.S. Ballet Choreographers
“As he sees it, you can never really know a ballet unless you’ve performed it. He is terrifically serious. Though he looks and moves like a teen-ager—he does uptalk, he has made a ballet for an iPad app—his demeanor is habitually grave.”
The (Deeply) Serious Injuries Elite Performers Just Dance Through
“The screw that kept her foot together caused Ciapponi to limp, so she had it removed. The pain and uncertainty that came with that surgery made Ciapponi wonder if she had to start rethinking her career. She had no idea if her body could recover and become strong enough to do what she had spent 16 years training to do. Since she is Canadian, even her ability to stay and dance in the United States was in question.”