Category: dance

“Long headquartered outside of the city, the company has settled into its new home at Boardwalk Hall, with all the dancers living close by in two big houses. The company will dance regularly at the Claridge, on the Boardwalk at Kennedy Plaza, and in a series of ‘Up Close and Personal’ performances inside its new ballet studio.” Company founder/director Phyllis Papa talks about the company’s past and future.

The Kempsey-Fagg brothers of Birmingham – Oscar, aged 11; Marlo, 9; and Arlie, 6 – were all recruited by a Birmingham Royal Ballet outreach and education program for particularly promising young people. And they’ve got ready answers for anyone who might tease them about it.

“Boys don’t want to go in a class with girls where they end up being the only boy in the ballet class.”

“Our footwork certainly wasn’t ballet-grade, but each stride, dip and turn eased the tension and hinted at the skeleton of a more complex work of choreography crafted by the Dutch National Ballet.”

“The proposal came after complaints some mixed-sex dancers were ‘unfairly disadvantaged’ in competitions against all-male couples who are physically stronger.”

Gina Gibney has a singular opportunity to cultivate a new generation of audience members and artists. “Dance has just been in a downward spiral,” she says. “I can’t change that, but I do want to create a space … where things get better.” A modest proposal, but the response to Ms. Gibney’s new center will nonetheless foretell contemporary dance’s chance for survival.

Joan Acocella: “Glover is the greatest tap virtuoso of our time, perhaps of all time. … And, perhaps for that reason – that he never had to woo us – Glover had a problem with charm: namely, that he didn’t show much. … He not only didn’t smile; often he wouldn’t look at the audience. He did the show while watching his shoes or the band. And the fact that the people he wasn’t looking at were mostly white made the whole situation more edgy. We went there to love him, and he wouldn’t love us back, or even like us.”

“The British Dance Council is to consider proposals that would define a dance partnership as having to consist between a man and “a lady” on 21 July, just before a major competition in Bournemouth. If it is passed, it will ban same-sex couples from mainstream contests, regulating them to same-sex-only categories.”

His appointment, just two years after his first work for City Ballet, “makes him the second person to hold this position at City Ballet, after Christopher Wheeldon, who was the company’s resident choreographer from 2001 to 2008.”

“For its storied reputation of turning out some of the ballet world’s best dancers, Cuba has two equally dictatorial people to thank — Alicia Alonso and Fidel Castro. One an artist. One a political leader. Both with undeterrable personalities and a fierce commitment to their own agendas. Neither to be crossed lightly.”