Category: dance

Earlier this month, Khan told an interviewer, “I don’t want to say we should have more female choreographers for the sake of having more female choreographers.” Says the open letter in response, “We do not live in a meritocracy – all the data proves this. The way in which we ascribe merit is itself socially constructed and gendered.”

“I would hope that the work I have done throughout my career to help support anyone with talent would demonstrate to those that don’t know me well, and to my colleagues in the dance industry that do know me, that “those comments are simply not where my heart lies.”

“The Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Eastside school features studios framed in soaring glass and steel, ‘floating’ floors to absorb dancers’ leaps and pirouettes, expanses of mirrors, and barres to give even the youngest girls in leotards the surroundings of a professional ballerina. But the industrial warehouse building the ballet has so carefully transformed is directly in the path of Sound Transit’s East Link route through Bellevue.”

“Some small, short-term studies that suggest dance might improve some of those symptoms, especially ease of walking. But Leventhal says the class was never intended as just physical therapy. ‘There’s also an artistic quality,” he says, “where we’re hoping people are able to say something with those gestures.’ This is particularly relevant to people with Parkinson’s, who start to lose their expressive ability.”

“For dance companies that seek to exist beyond their founding choreographer, there is the inevitable conundrum. How does a company exist without new works? The Merce Cunningham Dance Company disbanded when faced with that prospect; others, like the Martha Graham Dance Company, evolved into repertory groups. But the Brown company, which has seven members, is trying something different: remounting Ms. Brown’s works in site-specific locations all over the world.”

On Sunday, the International Association of Blacks in Dance “is holding auditions for minority women seeking contracts with American companies – the group’s first such event. Ballet Memphis, Pennsylvania Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and Washington Ballet, among others, are sending representatives.” Here’s a Q&A with IABD chair Denise Saunders Thompson about the project.

But you remember his work if you’ve seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. And Jack Cole’s dances “are often the most compelling reason to revisit movies like Down to Earth, On the Riviera and The I Don’t Care Girl. … It’s hard not to be drawn in – and sometimes taken aback – by the vitality and sexual exuberance of Cole’s dance numbers.”

“Perhaps the most unlikely pairing in live performance has become a Sunday night favorite of [the hipster mecca] – and it’s starting to spread across the US. Our correspondent visits Devil’s Point Strip Club, originator of the trend.”

“Will the show take a page from the success of the expansion of Fox’s MasterChef with MasterChef Junior and switch to younger dancers?”

“The work is very theatrical, but we don’t have any acting classes – we never did. We’re not actors. Pina put us in situations where people might feel we were acting, but we’re not. We might have been talking about something that happened to us, and she put it on stage.”