Category: dance

“It’s exactly like a 30-year circle,” said Ms. Whelan, 46, who joined City Ballet as an apprentice in 1984 and went on to become a prima ballerina and to create roles in new ballets by choreographers including Christopher Wheeldon, Twyla Tharp and Alexei Ratmansky, among others.

“Can O’Hare’s dazzling company be related to the Royal Ballet which had Equity banging on his door complaining that the dancers were overworked, let alone the company from which glittering principals Tamara Rojo and Alina Cojocaru defected to the rival English National Ballet?”

“Let’s do a brand-new story that works well for dance, and commission new music, new sets. Have it be a big production. Hire someone to write the libretto. Put a lot of care into it. Even take the time to workshop a lot of it. I’d take an approach that plays or Broadway musicals take, where there can be many phases of development for it, so it’s not rushed.”

The Royal Ballet star, now artistic director of English National Ballet, tells the famously confrontational interview program that “We never spend any time talking about the joy, about the huge satisfaction that being a ballet dancer gives you.” (video)

“In the spring of 2010, two budding choreographers made their main stage debuts at the Royal Opera House – Liam Scarlett and Jonathan Watkins, both twentysomething dancers with the Royal Ballet.” Scarlett has made conventional career progress at Covent Garden; Watkins went home to Yorkshire and created a dance about a boy and his pet raptor.

Wendy Perron: “I’ve read that Graham cultivated an Eastern look herself and was flattered whenever anyone mistook her for Asian. Some think that, since she had a long torso and short legs, her close-to-the-floor technique was particularly suited to Asian bodies. … Whatever the reason, more Asian dancers have found a home in Graham’s company than in any other modern dance group – and most have been beyond brilliant.”

Alastair Macaulay: “Mr. Taylor has said he hopes for revivals of works by the dead choreographers Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and José Limón … But the problems of reviving these pieces are immense, especially with casts used to dancing in a Taylor way. The issue of younger choreographers is something else, though.”

“We’re characters on a stage and portraying a role, so I don’t feel like there is any ideal image that you should have to have, as with actors and actresses. … In terms of body types in ballet, I think the field is becoming more open than it used to be because of the types of movement and choreography we’re doing that are calling us to be more athletic. We have to have muscles in order to support that, so I think that dancers are healthier looking now.”

“The greatest things that happen in choreography are by accident. Sometimes it’s a dancer’s physical reaction to the last step that informs my brain and leads to the next one. Or how a group of dancers happens to stand together, or if they fall out of a lift, or accidentally try a different grip that creates a window of opportunity and gives direction to what should happen next.

Li Cunxin, now artistic director of the Queensland Ballet, describes his childhood on a dirt-poor farm, the fluke that led to his strenuous dance training in Beijing, and how he came to Houston and stardom in the U.S.