Category: dance

“Ballet is easily the most photogenic of the sports. An art form that toes the line between performance and feats of athleticism, it’s filled with pirouettes and arabesques that when frozen in a frame appear like paintings or perfectly sculpted statues.”

Sylvie Guillem: “One foot on stage. Curtain up. That was it… The relation I had with the audience, it was fantastic. It is always so strange. You dance, and there is an answer – that is always true. You put me in a room with people and I hide in the corner; put me on stage and I’m different.”

“Behold, a brief history of ballet invading pop music.”

Judith Mackrell: “A couple of months ago I asked whether choreographers need editors and whether dance, like literature, might benefit from having some kind of inbuilt system of feedback, comment and control. It became clear that this was a question that others were asking. And a few weeks later, it was taken up by Rambert in their offer of a public debate.”

Two years ago, the Teatro del Maggio Musicale, facing the same cash crises that afflict most Italian opera houses these days, announced that it could no longer afford to maintain its ballet company, called MaggioDanza. Supporters put together a private entity intended to maintain the troupe at the theater. It didn’t work (and they’re all suing each other), so MaggioDanza will close after all. (in Italian)

“There are so many talented female choreographers out there, but they’re much less quick than men to accept work. Some of the women I approached had little children and decided it was too much to deal with. Some felt they were not ready for a big London commission. … There’s no shortage of men who want to experiment and put themselves forward, but we have to go out to find the women.”

“Since founding her practice in 2008, Rodriguez has become the go-to physical therapist for much of the ballet world’s elite talent, treating marquee dancers like Benjamin Millepied and Wendy Whelan, as well as members of companies including the New York City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey school and France’s Paris Opera Ballet.”

The 33-year-old Quebecker is a principal and the National Ballet of Canada and arguably the nation’s biggest male ballet star. He also makes high-profile guest appearances, composes and performs music, runs a summer arts festival in the countryside north of Montreal, and is choreographing a full-length ballet based on one of the most beloved works in all of French literature (Le Petit Prince). And he’s a dad.

Essentially, Taylor will become a presenter of dance as well as a dance company.

Thanks to a series of proverbially unfortunate events that haven’t, in the end, worked out so badly, New York Theater Ballet – homeless just a year ago – has found itself ensconced in one of the East Village’s iconic avant-garde performance venues.