Category: dance

“Balanchine knew how quickly his ballerinas could lose details he taught. He used to tell them, ‘If I go away for a weekend, and I come back, I see the difference. If I’m away for two weeks, other people start to see it. If I’m away for a month, everybody sees it.’
“‘And so – it’s been more than 30 years,” Ashley said.”

“Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance, an umbrella name for his organization — when the troupe tours it will remain the Paul Taylor Dance Company — opens on Tuesday at the David H. Koch Theater. Its mission is ambitious: to become a home for American modern dance.”

“We’d take his moves and deconstruct them for six hours a day … Bill’s methods were so codified he could use them on stage as improvisations. We would be real-time choreographing, making decisions about timing and phrasing and spacing. There was a lot to be aware of.”

“Ballet officials quietly began a fundraising drive in January and have thus far tallied half a million dollars. Now they must match that figure to keep the company afloat. Company officials also estimate they will need to have raised $3.5 million by October to be able to fully reinvent the company’s business model and ensure its long-term stability.”

“You might think of Silicon Valley as awash in youthful exuberance and money, enough to keep a medium-size ballet company afloat. Indeed, the challenge of getting young techies excited about works by Twyla Tharp, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine was what lured Jose Manuel Carreno, 46, to San Jose.”

“David Hallberg, the American Ballet Theater principal dancer, is injured and will not perform during the company’s Metropolitan Opera House season … Mr. Hallberg, who is also a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, had foot surgery last fall.”

When the Bourbon Street burlesque club Lucky Pierre’s dismissed performer Ruby Rage – over the objections of the show’s producer – “word spread quickly and social media did what it does best, dumping voluminous righteous outrage on every conceivable target: the club, its owners, its employees, [producer] Bella Blue, the traditions of burlesque itself.”

“I think the thing that’s changed the most over the years is that it just becomes more and more and more difficult to sustain organizations and to sustain the art itself. The funding climate has changed over the years: it’s much more difficult and much more competitive. And the nature of the audience has changed as well. There is just so much more competition for people’s time especially with what’s available online, in new media, and on demand.”

“The lawsuit rolls on, pitting a 57-year-old stage carpenter against one of the country’s premier ballet companies. And it puts two friends, who bonded during years of working alongside the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev and Susan Jaffe, on opposite sides of the courtroom.”