Category: dance

“Cheered by tourists, tolerated by regulars, feared by those who frown upon kicks in the face, subway dancers have unwittingly found themselves a top priority for the New York Police Department – a curious collision of a Giuliani-era policing approach, a Bloomberg-age dance craze and a new administration that has cast the mostly school-age entertainers as fresh-face avatars of urban disorder.”

“As assistant to Tomasson, to whom he will report directly, Stowell will have his fingers in just about every aspect of the company pie on both the artistic and administrative (read financial) sides.”

Alastair Macaulay: “It was hard not to think of politics when watching the Bolshoi’s repertory – which was entirely pre-glasnost. Seeing the tedious mix of Swan Lake (in Yuri Grigorovich’s dismal production), Don Quixote (in Alexei Fadeyechev’s version) and Spartacus (all Grigorovich and all hokum) was to feel the clock turned back 40 years.”

For Cincinnati’s Lumenocity celebration, a choreographer and two dancers from Cincinnati Ballet create a work to be digitized and projected onto the (enormous and ornate) face of the city’s Music Hall.

“If yoga and pilates are now standard, with classes from gyms to chilly church halls, ballet – which has a level of technique so punishing that only a tiny chosen few will actually succeed – is perfect for fashion. It’s inherently elitist in its quest for physical perfection.”

They include “closely coaching the dancers, touring more, giving outdoor public performances, organizing outreach programs with schools, and bringing in new choreographers. He listed Christopher Wheeldon, Wayne McGregor, Justin Peck, and Liam Scarlett as possibilities. He also wants to reassure his dancers and artistic staff.”

“Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don’t know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists.”

“I am not interested in sporting diamond tiaras on stage, or having my point shoes cooked and eaten by my fans. Ballet has evolved and the ballerina figure with it. … There is simply no reason, nor time, to perpetuate century-old clichés, such as the remote, semi-divine figure of the 19th-century ballet star.”

“If you’ve seen a movie in the last 20 years, chances are you know the choreographer Marguerite Derricks’s work, if not her name. Austin Powers’s epic go-go dance through the streets? Ms. Derricks’s idea. Abigail Breslin’s climactic strip routine in Little Miss Sunshine? Ms. Derricks was just off camera, encouraging Ms. Breslin to claw like a tiger. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s tango in Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Well, Ms. Derricks was Ms. Jolie’s first partner.”

The 38-year-old Spaniard, a former star at ABT, “is slated to start part-time in September, then full-time in January.” Earlier this year he announced that he would close his company in Barcelona and leave Spain.