Category: dance

This weekend’s National Ballet of Canada program of new works will feature Svetlana Lunkina, who “made headlines in January when she announced that, after 15 years as one of the Bolshoi’s top-ranking artists, she was leaving the troubled ballet company.”

“It’s astonishing how distinct — to my eyes, certainly — necks, feet, waists, thighs prove. Phrasing and dynamics grow in significance. And footwork beams out, like reflective glass catching sunlight from an opposite hillside.”

Alina Cojocaru: “At the Royal there was one way of doing things – the Royal Ballet way. Now I’ve cut the ropes that were holding me, I can experiment, and I’m not afraid to fall.”

“A wave of international ballet stars are increasingly leaping from company to company, creating their own brands and becoming more like world-traveling conductors and opera stars. In doing so, they are … changing an art form long defined by national styles that dancers perfected as they grew up with – and stayed loyal to – a single company.”

The trial of a Bolshoi soloist for the acid attack on the boss, the sudden installation of a fired Bolshoi principal at the Mariinsky’s historic dance school, accusations of backbiting and bribery … Three of Russia’s top ballet stars (including Nikolai Tsiskaridze, the fired one) speak publicly about the mess.

When the Mark Morris Dance Group’s Maile Okamura “designs costumes for dance pieces, she doesn’t have to go far to get a performer’s perspective – she’s one herself.”

“I felt I was forgotten and unimportant to them. I begged to be put in corps de ballet just to be able to dance on the stage. ‘No’, they would say. ‘You are sticking out, you are too different, you raise your leg too high, you do it way too emotionally.’ … They even forgot to pay my salary on time and would sporadically pay me something in cash when they realized I was there.”

Anatoly Iksanov “told the court he was aware of a ‘difficult relationship’ between [ballet chief and victim Sergei] Filin and [defendant Pavel] Dmitrichenko but never personally witnessed any animosity. … Looking straight at Dmitrichenko, Iksanov dismissed the dancer’s claims that Filin had threatened staff and even extorted $100,000 from the troupe chief.”

Diversity in the ranks of dancers at U.S. ballet companies is an ongoing concern. American Ballet Theatre’s CEO, Rachel Moore says that “the real issue is the pipeline” – not enough minority dance students have the opportunity to get top-level training. So ABT created Project Plié to start addressing that problem.