Category: dance

“Queerness specifically in ballet is a funny thing; ballet does have a history of having a lot of gay men perform it, and you can read into certain ballets’ narratives about gay men. There’s a lot of coding there. So it’s not like there hasn’t been any queerness in ballet, but related to the representation of women, I don’t think there has been.”

Robert Manning Jr. wrote, in a protest letter to the company, “I hope you will sit down with me and attempt to explain to me, in person, why you believed it was a remotely good idea to not only cast Othello with a light-skinned Brazilian ballet dancer, BUT to also paint his face BROWN.”

“[Caty] Solace has served in the top post since last year. She will remain as a consultant with the organization. The move comes after the ballet ended its 2014-15 season early this spring, canceled its popular Beer and Ballet event and laid off dancers with three weeks left in the season.”

“Despised as pests and preyed on by thugs, rapists, pimps and murderers,for tens of thousands of abandoned orphans and abused runaways life on the streets in the Philippine capital region is unspeakable misery. … In recent years, [a few lucky street boys have] undergone a complete transformation, thanks to an opportunity to join ballet classes at the Academy One Music and Dance Centre.”

“The ballet recently announced that it would cut its season short as a cost-saving measure. … In response, more than 20 of the laid-off performers founded the Capital Dance Project, a new, dancer-driven company that held its first production Saturday. The dancers put the show together in 20 days.”

At the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Museum, the dance troupe and video artist Bo Gehring take the genre as far as they can from the cliché of old white guys in wigs.

Former Australian Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet artistic director Marina Gielgud explains how much of the job is coaching and how much is teaching steps, the preparation she has to do for a job, the challenges of remounting another choreographer’s work, and how she handles a star dancer who wants to do the steps his way.

“Before we married, we had the perfect scenario — we did everything together. We could just look at one another across the room in ballet class, and that was enough to check in.’

“Then there are the ornate headpieces and floppy, wide-brimmed hats. Everyone wears a wig. … There are 210 of them, three times as many as in any other Ballet Theater production, the head of the wig department, Rena Most, said. The Queen’s perruque towers above her like a sheaf of wheat, augmented further by a spray of giant feathers.”