Category: dance

“Both in and outside Athens, pop-up milongas, like tango dance studios, have gained a popularity that have taken aficionados aback.

“Forget the funky chicken – the blue-capped cordon bleu prefers a tap dance to attract mates, a new study says. … What’s more, the cordon bleus, these Fred Astaires of the bird world, seem to be unique: ‘No other species we know of has this tap dancing behavior.'”

“The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago are to hold an extensive two-city exhibition, ‘Merce Cunningham: Common Time,’ opening in February 2017.” There will be Cunningham sets by the likes of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, film and video installations by Charles Atlas and Nam June Paik, Cunningham music by John Cage and Morton Feldman – and, of course, dance, performed by both international companies and a group of former dancers with Merce’s own company.

With acclaimed music video choreographer — and “SYTYCD” alum — Brian Friedman as its mentor and Vine star Liza Koshy as its host, the series pits 10 choreographers against each other in themed challenges and hopes to do for that industry what “Project Runway” did for fashion designers.

“Ultimately we go on with no mention of this obscene parallel reality abroad. But our pre-curtain announcement, ‘Turn off cellphones as a courtesy to your fellow audience members,’ seems poignant to me as I think about courtesy, as I think about gatherings, and as I realize that performance cannot take place without the right to assemble.”

Herwig Radnetter of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna talks about dressage as an art, discipline and training, relating to his quadraped partners, and white gloves.

“A typical classical ballet is based on fantasy or fairy tales, … Flesh and Bone is a contemporary twist on these familiar tropes. The princess escapes the tower of her imprisonment and flees straight into another evil lord’s hands, and must struggle to free herself from him while battling the dragon of her past as well and severing its final chains. Along the way, she encounters several would-be knights … and dodges the rival fading queen/ballerina who wants to see her destroyed.”

“Before she became the Queen of Swing, Miller was just a poor black girl in Harlem who loved to dance. Even as she watched her mother struggle to make rent by cleaning houses, Miller dreamed of another path.”

The 42-year-old dancer, who is heading back to Cuba to run a dance school there: “Allow yourself to make mistakes. There is no such thing as failure because life is a learning process. … Be curious and enjoy, enjoy enjoy because one day you will blink and realise that 70 years have gone by.”

“Yes, I’m Dracula, they’re the soil and the dance is the coffin. … In a way it’s not a bad analogy because what I do is, you know — can I dance? Sort of. Am I in condition to do much of anything right now? Absolutely not. I don’t obviously have the instrument now to evolve really demanding physical movement. For that I need — hello — younger bodies.”