Category: dance

Akram Khan, Hofesh Schechter, and DV8 Physical Theatre’s Lloyd Newson say that dancers from elsewhere students are “fitter, stronger and more versatile”, while those trained in the UK “lack rigour, technique and performance skills.”

It’s not just a matter of the movement. There are the thick layer of earth covering the stage, 20 Christmas trees, the stage fog, the brass band; the huge wading pool; the giant cactuses, the glass coffin on wheels, and the toilet chain hanging from a dancer’s mouth …

Artistic director Septime Webre says that the new project, called “Let’s Dance Together,” isn’t “just about community outreach and scholarships … [It’s] to try to build an integrated faculty, and an integrated company so dancers can see themselves in the grownups onstage.”

“Charya Burt trained in and taught classical Cambodian dance in Phnom Penh, where her family suffered oppression by the Khmer Rouge. Now in the Bay Area, she’s passing on her art – and pushing it in new directions.” (video)

“[The company has] lined up $6.5 million in new support as it prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary next season with a national tour and a new production of George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a dash of Florida flavor.”

“We live in a society that rewards fast success based on little talent or commitment, which is transient and a dangerous place to be. Do we want to promote instant success and instant failure, or do we want to promote self-esteem and hard work? … I had a strong technique and was hard-working – I trained for six hours, six days a week from the age of 11.”

“There is never a sense that Bourne is berating his dancers or psychologically buffeting them into shape, and he certainly is not a shouter. … But although he is a self-effacing presence for much of the time, the dancers are keenly attuned to his gaze; when he does speak to the entire cast, the studio falls silent on the spot.”

“Copeland and Mack, both African American, will go where no dancers of color have gone before. They will become the first African Americans to dance the leading roles of Odette/Odile and Prince Siegfried respectively in what remains our whitest performing art: classical ballet.”

“The problem of dance reconstruction — of legacy, essentially — is one that keeps Ms. Tharp up at night. Her archiving system, which she will reveal in her presentation with ‘The Fugue,’ rejects the familiar notion that dance is solely an ephemeral art.”