Category: dance

“It’s not just relatively advanced techniques like pointe work that can cause problems, the academy warns – but forcing ‘turnout’, where dancers splay out their feet and open their hips, can also cause damage.”

“The world of the theatre is cruel. It looks beautiful from the outside, but underneath everything is boiling.”

So the Winter Olympics have convinced you of skating’s potential, but Disney on Ice just isn’t for you? For his company Imperial Ice Stars, producer Tony Mercer takes skilled Russian champions, trains them in character acting and mime, and staged skated adaptations of classic ballets; Canada’s Le Patin Libre takes the contemporary dance approach, exploring shape, flow and composition in non-narrative works.

“Almost as artistically as the two dancers themselves, the drones hover up and down, left and right, to cover up the private parts of the human performers with thin sheets of white paper. A complex performance between man and machine unfolds, and one cannot help but admire the perfect timing and placement of the little artificial dancers.” (video)

Alastair Macaulay: “Ballet exudes tradition, is surrounded by conservatism and still depends on a small core repertory of 19th-century classics. This century, though, it’s been showing multiple signs of changing its character. … What’s become evident, especially this year, is the new propensity shown by diverse choreographers to give equal weight to same-sex and opposite-sex couples.”

Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck, Wayne McGregor, and Liam Scarlett. “All five men are wonderfully accomplished choreographers. … But are companies oversaturating the market with these [brand names], and making ballet too safe?”

Mark Monahan: “Look back over the new and recent work that the Royal Ballet performed at Covent Garden in 2015, and it is hard to feel much festive cheer.”

“‘Try it. Just try it,’ he said. ‘I thought I would never like it, but I’d venture a guess it’s even harder than football. With football, there’s a limit to what you can do. But when you’re dancing, you really have no limit. Because you can get better and better and better.'”

“‘I said to him, ‘You see these two men, French police, you have to go to them,’ ‘ says Ms Saint in a program to be aired by the BBC. ‘It’s like in a ballet. He jumped. The French policemen took him, and then there was a fight between one of the policemen and one of the bodyguards. The French policeman said to the Russian: ‘Don’t touch me’, screaming ‘Vous etes en France ici.’ ‘”

“Though it is rare for dancers to perform into their 40s, Ms. Boykin said, ‘We’re not dancing late, we’re dancing just right.'”