Category: dance

Damien Jalet: “There was definitely a question mark when suddenly we were not a couple. Would we continue to perform this? There was a moment of transition – it was tough because, with each performance, you go back to where you were in your life when you were creating it. But for [Sidi] Larbi [Cherkaoui] and I, work had been such an important part in our relationship. We felt it was beautiful to preserve that.”

What kind of shape are your feet in? How do you keep them in working order? Can we see your best non-ballet dance moves? What happens when you get a rip in your tights? (video)

“I’ll venture to say dance audiences are better behaved than other crowds because they’re more immersed in the show. They’re not as distractible. That feeling you have, when a dancer leaps lightly across the stage and you’re carried along with her — that’s your brain, your whole sensorimotor system, responding sympathetically to another human body in motion.”

“The Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Choreographers, to be offered to three candidates over a three-year period, will provide fellows a stipend of $35,000, along with office and studio space, access to housing in New York and close contact with other artists and scholars.”

Ángel Corella, artistic director of Pennsylvania Ballet and a former star at American Ballet Theater, talks frankly about the bullying and paternal disapproval he suffered while studying ballet as a boy in Spain, the strength and athleticism ballet requires, and the importance of the boys-only classes he has started in Philadelphia.

Okay, they’re describing it as a “London season” rather than a festival, but they’re calling it “Hofest,” and it “will encompass everything from Shechter’s opera debut to bringing his critically-acclaimed piece Political Mother into the rock concert atmosphere of Brixton Academy.” (And, of course, performances at Sadler’s Wells.)

“The women in the company have given us a few tips. But mostly they find it very amusing.”

“‘As a performer, you create situations from the inside,’ [Dana Caspersen] said. ‘Now I’m interested in looking more broadly at bigger structures: How do our actions shape our world, and how does the world shape our actions?'”

“His intention had always been to return to Broadway after the Army to try acting as an adult. For now, he’s dancing and will perform in “On the Town” through mid-June, after having successfully filled in as a last-minute replacement in February.”

Alastair Macaulay: “How should we react to a waltz in which the man’s opening move is to lift the woman and hold her horizontally along his chest as he turns? Had you thought of ‘Send in the Clowns’ as a Viennese waltz? Me neither. … It’s a tribute to the three-part PBS series America’s Ballroom Challenge … that the show broke down some of my prejudices.”