Marius Petipa more or less created what we now think of as classical ballet, but very few of his works have survived intact. “Together with Doug Fullington, an expert in Stepanov notation, he[Ratmansky] has painstakingly pieced together this 1881 Petipa ballet [Paquita], created for the Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg.”
Category: dance
The Dancer Who Conquered Autism Through Ballet
“I was diagnosed with autism when I was three, and I was always obsessed with dance. Anything movement-related I loved. My mother tried to put me in sports when I was younger even though I said I wanted to dance; she wanted to see if I could do anything else besides dance, maybe so I wouldn’t get bullied. But when I was six, she finally let me do my first ballet class. I stuck with it ever since.”
Matthew Bourne’s Proudest Achievement? Following Up “Swan Lake”
“It became this massive hit and everyone was saying, ‘How can you follow that?’ It did what dance shows don’t normally do. It went into the West End and Broadway. It was almost impossible to follow it up, to try and build on that audience that loved that piece and show we could do more.”
Grant Saves Dance/UP – For A Time
“The William Penn Foundation has decided to provide short-term funding for Dance USA/Philadelphia, the service organization whose grant application was unexpectedly denied by the foundation last month after many years of support.”
Prepping For The Bolshoi’s ‘Swan Lake’ [VIDEO]
“When the tragic situation happened with Sergei Filin, I froze. … I understood that if we wanted to do something good for Sergei, we have to try to dance as well as we can.”
Talking Ballet History With Jennifer Homans And Kevin McKenzie
Homans, author of the survey of ballet through the ages Apollo’s Angels and director of NYU’s new Center for Ballet and the Arts, and McKenzie, former star and current artistic director of American Ballet Theatre, discuss the long Paris-to-Vienna-to-St. Petersburg-to-America trajectory of the art form with host Leonard Lopate. (audio)
How George Balanchine Found His Ideal “Nutcracker”
“Fifty years ago, George Balanchine finally staged the Nutcracker of his dreams, a triumph for the New York City Ballet in its then new Lincoln Center home. Laura Jacobs tells how Balanchine’s childhood Christmases, his youth in St. Petersburg (dancing multiple roles in The Nutcracker himself), and his 41-foot tree sparked an American holiday tradition.”
Backstage At The “Edward Scissorhands” Ballet
Vanity Fair gets a look at Matthew Bourne’s adaptation of the cult film. (slideshow)
Misty Copeland Dances For The Wall Street Journal
She performs an excerpt from Alexei Ratmansky’s version of The Nutcracker, then talks about her career, body image, Under Armour, and her upcoming “docu-series”. (video)
Dance Theatre Of Harlem Executive Director To Step Down
“Mr. Naidu, a former dancer and choreographer who was born in South Africa, joined the company in 1991, and was director of the Dance Theater of Harlem School and the company’s community outreach program, Dancing Through Barriers, before he became executive director.”