Category: dance

“Just when the dance world has become so stimulating with its jumble of influences from all over the world, and when classical ballet and contemporary dance are criss-crossing in interesting ways, we have recently seen announcements for two major initiatives that stake out claims for a certain kind of dance—a limited kind of dance that is easy to name.”

“The Italian dancer and choreographer Francesco Ventriglia has been appointed as the director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet, following … the surprise resignation of Mr. Stiefel, a former American Ballet Theater principal dancer, who took on the job in 2011.”

How you can tell this is in Las Vegas: “The instruction will help prepare students for the commercial dance field — music videos, touring musicals, commercials, television shows, touring with recording artists and dancing in shows on the Strip.”

“The most obvious changes are in the company leadership and staff. There has been an almost complete turnover — from a new board president and new executive director to new teachers at the company school. The board has become better organized and more functional, with a more clearly defined and helpful relationship with the company.”

“Most of my shoes last two and a half weeks. I wear a lot of Jordans because they feel really good and are comfortable when I’m dancing and they have just enough toe support.”

“Not many musicals require the specialized skills of world-class ballet dancers. It’s mostly a fluke that three high-profile shows with such needs are opening within months of one another.”

“Peck stands apart for his ability to channel an almost conservative approach to ballet through an athletic idiom that’s easy for newcomers to appreciate.” Says New York City Ballet ballet master in chief Peter Martins, “He’s willing to break the rules but stay within the classical vocabulary.”

The chamber-size company was launched in 1979 by former Boston Ballet dancers Skip Warren and Rachel Whitman and moved around the Massachusetts coast until sputtering out on Cape Cod in 2003. Now the founders’ daughter, Lucy Warren-Whitman, has revived the troupe.

Dame Gillian Lynne recreates a ballet about the working class of Glasgow that was performed for soldiers near the battlefields of Germany during the war.

Says the former Australian Ballet star, who’s just starting his new job as artistic director of Louisville Ballet: “I might be a bit presumptuous in saying this but I would really like to bring a cinematic quality to these productions, to these traditional ballets. I think audiences are used to and expect a certain quality in period pieces, whether they be on the silver screen or whether they be on stage. So what I would really like to bring is reality.”