Category: dance

“Classical ballet is already getting smaller and smaller. I hope that it is not going to disappear. But what I see around me is a lot of choreographers who are destroying the classics. I wish that instead of doing Sleeping Beauty in some crazy new way, they would just go and invent their own full-length ballet story.”

“For more than three decades, the Hong Kong Dance Company has been synonymous with Chinese dance, especially traditional folk and ethnic disciplines. But with Yang Yuntao now at its helm, this focus is likely to shift.”

The star dancer returned home to spain to launch the Corella Ballet Castilla León in 2008 and renamed the company the Barcelona Ballet when he moved it to the Catalan capital in 2012. But years of trying to keep the troupe running through Spain’s economic crisis has worn him down. (in Spanish)

At least six and possibly eight performers left the company following a performance in San Juan this weekend – and they’re already booked to dance at a benefit in Miami this coming weekend.

“Instead of luxuriating in a slower-paced life and working deeply on his dances, McIntyre grew immersed in administrative tasks: fundraising, crafting fliers and videos, designing the troupe’s Web site, speaking at events throughout the community, leading activities at hospitals and myriad other duties that took him away from the studio.”

“Wologem’s dancing could even be seen as a kinesthetic counterpart to the formation of women’s advocacy groups, political education, and other efforts to cultivate the rights of women within Burkina Faso.”

Fabrice Calmels (6’6″) of the Joffrey: “You know, it was a disadvantage for the longest time … being so tall, a lot of the time people didn’t know what to do with me. … I couldn’t show what I was doing and who I really was as a performer because all they would see is that height.”

The mercurial young ballet star (followed in short order by his colleague and mentor, Igor Zelensky) abruptly bolted from a London production of Peter Schaufuss’s Midnight Express last year. Schaufuss sued both men for breach of contract; they have now arrived at a confidential settlement.

“We see that people don’t want to be full-time; they want to be part-time and they want to have their freedom. They want to work with lots of people. They want to make a dance but then they want to make a film but then they want to do this or do that. It’s a very, very different sensibility we’re seeing in the strands of this new world. It’s so hybridized and I think we’re going to play that out for a while.”

“During naval service in the Middle East, Paul Hurley lost a leg. Now he’s joined a dance company. … But what he’s involved in” – choreographer Liz Lerman’s Healing Wars – “is more than a dance.”