Category: dance

Sebastian Smee: “It always makes me deeply uneasy to see [people] take to Edgar Degas’s ballet pictures as if they were some sort of grand affirmation of their art. They’re really not. … These poor girls were commonly known as ‘les petits rats,’ the little rats, and Degas, who also called them his ‘little monkey girls,’ was precisely interested in this sordid aspect.”

Cabin in the Sky is getting revived this summer by New York’s influential Encores! series for the sake of its score by Vernon Duke. With no record of the original choreography (partly) by Balanchine, how is Camille A. Brown making dances for the show? By looking to the work of the original co-star and co-choreographer, the pioneering Katherine Dunham.

“To face the cultural and economic issues of our time, we need new kinds of organizations, and I’ve realized that it’s too hard to turn this one into what I think is most relevant for ballet today. It’s two and a half years that I’ve worked on this, and I know it’s a short time, but it is long enough to realize this is not something I want to do. They need someone better suited to run this company.”

At the end of a two-hour event unveiling the coming season, “[general director Stéphane] Lissner declared the floor open for questions. But, he added: ‘I ask that your questions be about the 2016-17 season, and only about the season. We won’t answer anything else.’ There was a brief silence, then Mr. Lissner rose to his feet. ‘No questions? Well, thank you.'”

“Being forced to step off stage gave me time to learn more about the profession. I watched so many performances, rehearsals, classes as well as taught a number of classes myself. This gave me a moment to genuinely slow down and take everything back to basics.”

“Before Pilobolus, before Momix, before Mummenschantz, there was Alwin Nikolais, … [who] created shape-shifting, otherworldly visual wonders through original experiments with bodies, space, light and sound, and his work was hugely popular and influential from the 1950s until the 1990s. Today, however, it’s not well known to general audiences.”

The choreographer explains his inspiration for his new ballet Strapless, about a young New Orleans woman who became a sort of Belle Epoque Paris supermodel – until she was ruined by a scandalous portrait painted by John Singer Sargent.

Sarah Kaufman: “It’s difficult to imagine a new director matching Webre’s magnetism, room-brightening cheer and go-go output. But a new hire doesn’t need to. … With a strong financial position, the Washington Ballet has an opportunity to shoot for the top. It should focus on the very highest quality, not just the short-term buzz of exhilaration. Why shouldn’t it be the nation’s premier chamber-size ballet company?”

“Viewing the creation of The Most Incredible Thing on Mr. Peck’s and Mr. Dzama’s Instagram feeds offers a new way of engaging with dance and contemporary art. I began to wonder how much more they and the dancers are asked to account for themselves and their work in fixed forms. Documenting ballet has always been a tricky proposition. By translating dance into writings, interviews, recordings, and critical essays, you understand how ephemeral the medium is.”

“Not even its organizers had completely believed this particular dance would take place, and disaster was still quite possible. Forbidding American college students to dance rarely seems like a tenable position, but up to the very day it was scheduled, administrators at the university felt they had not only public opinion but also the law on their side in blocking it. These students didn’t merely want to dance.”