Category: dance

“On Wednesday, seven ballet dancers will invent a new dance based on audience suggestions. This may not seem crazy to anyone familiar with improv comedy shows like “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” But it’s edgy for the ballet world.”

“Merce Cunningham used chance to choreograph his legendary solo dance Changeling. Now chance has given new life to this long-lost work.”

“In brainstorming out-of-the-box ways to promote and fund her company, American Ballet Theatre, arts executive Rachel Moore came up with the idea of putting it on a box. A shoe box, that is.”

“Thomas Small, a choreographer from Dundee, was selected from 750 applicants including poets, sculptors and multi-media artists. Although his role is for a radio station, listeners will not be able to hear his work on the airwaves – instead, his performance pieces will appear on the Radio 2 website.”

“It seems almost inconceivable that although it has been in existence since 1956, the Chicago-based Joffrey Ballet has never had an endowment, concentrating instead on making its operating budget. But a $500,000 challenge grant from the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation, the match for which was exceeded by the company, has resulted in a new $1.5 million endowment for the company.”

Kilian Martin “can skate upside down, hands on the ground, board on the walls. Then he’s upright, pirouetting on the board as if it’s an ice skate. Occasionally, he tips the board on its end and balances on the top edge.” (And he’s becoming a YouTube star.)

“I agree that the dancing is stamped with the spirit of the times. ABT has given us a piece of history, and there is value in that. Ballet historians are soaking this moment up. But for some of us, it’s like seeing lithographs of dainty ballerinas come to life. In this Sleeping Beauty I missed dancing that extends into space; I missed the directness that Balanchine has given us. Dance evolves for a reason. It adjusts to how cultures and bodies change.”

Seven such humanoid robots, of the model NAO, are the stars of “ROBOT,” a dance-theater work by the Spanish-born choreographer Blanca Li that had its American debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House on Tuesday. There are also eight human dancers, but the 90-minute production perks up when the robots arrive, and it sags whenever they’re absent.

“The 2009 death of the choreographer Pina Bausch plunged the future of her company, the Tanztheater Wuppertal, into doubt. … Now the [company] has announced that for the first time in its history, choreographers will be invited to create new pieces.”

“Someone left open the exhaust flues at the very top of the Wortham stage, which let in all the rain. The wood stage floor buckled, the stage lamps were full of water, and the legs and some of the scenery got soaked.”