Category: dance

“Almost from day one, the allotment of neurons in those brains (and therefore the way they function) is different today from the way it was even one generation ago. Every second of your lived experience represents new connections among the roughly 86 billion neurons packed inside your brain. Children, then, can become literally incapable of thinking and feeling the way their grandparents did. A slower, less harried way of thinking may be on the verge of extinction.”

“Ever since Osipova and Vasiliev left the Bolshoi in 2011 they’ve been on a quest for new dance experiences, and while each has found a wider classical repertory in other companies (Osipova recently joining the Royal Ballet), they’ve been hungry to experiment with contemporary dance.”

“Can’t dance be a tool that helps scrape away old, stale hate and bring physical, spiritual understanding? Can’t people feel, under their dancing feet, a common ground? I did a little research and found that, yes, in some ways this has been happening.”

“While ballet has a long way to go in addressing these issues, there are plenty of dancers in the contemporary realm who are actively working to change the white-washed, body oppressive world of ballet.”

Inspired by summer heat, Sarah Kaufman selects four of the most compelling hot-headed murders in the dance repertory. (You know all the characters, though the choices may surprise – for instance, Kaufman passes over Martha Graham’s depiction of Medea.)

“During the performance, skies cleared completely. On the return afterward, hundreds of dancegoers took the same softly lighted river path as I did back to town; we could look up through the pines to thousands of stars, unusually large. No urban opera house can match such accompanying marvels.”

“One of the most important skills for dance conductors is the ability to keep a steady tempo without becoming inexpressive or mechanical. They can’t rely on spontaneous rubatos or accelerations to create excitement or pathos. (It would throw off the dancers.)”

“[Copeland] will become the new face of Under Armour’s ‘I Will What I Want’ campaign, which focuses on the apparel giant’s women’s business. To appreciate Under Armour’s out-of-the-box thinking in tapping a ballerina to front its national ads, one has to grasp the complexity of Copeland’s story.”

“‘We all need to take a deep breath,’ says Jim Mitchell, the ballet’s fourth executive director in three years. During that time, the leadership was in flux and the organization was left homeless after a mold infestation shut down its headquarters in the former Orlando Utilities Commission building.”

An experimental program at Manhattan’s New Victory Theater has been presenting to youngsters – for free – three weeks of wide-ranging modern dance programming, with the companies doing the same material they perform for adult audiences. The dancers seem to love it even more than the kids do.