“In general, much of the wonder we associate with Diaghilev lies in the materials out of which he created his repertory: the scores, the designs, the ideas. And one factor that’s been key to the endurance of the Ballets Russes legend is the extent to which those materials have been re-worked by others over the decades.”
Category: dance
Explaining The Bolshoi Ballet, By The Western Presenter Who Knows Them Best
Lilian Hochhauser, who with her husband has been bringing the Bolshoi to London for 50 years: “It’s always been a fairly explosive company … They never hid their feelings, if you like. … But the most incredible thing is that nothing affects the dancing. The Mariinsky have also had their internal problems, but they’re rather quieter, you know, they’re calm. These are excitable people, the Bolshoi.”
How Ballet Is Like Porn, According to Tamara Rojo
Both are all about the male gaze, says the former star and current director of English National Ballet: “Female sensitivity is different, dnd there are issues that I want to see on stage approached by women. Very often we see relationships approached from a male perspective. Like in porn, it shapes the way you look at things.”
Pentacle Dance Works’ Director On The State Of The Art
As he prepares to retire after 34 years of leading the American service/management/advocacy organization, Ivan Sygoda talks about grant-making, “choreoturgs” (dramaturgs for dance), and what he (and we) miss about the NEA of the 1970s.
Moulin Rouge Ballet To Be Filmed For Theatrical Release
“The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s colourful dance production Moulin Rouge – The Ballet is being captured in a full-length, HD film that will screen in movie theatres across Canada.”
Europe’s Ballet Stars Are Rebelling Against Their Companies
It’s not just Rojo and now Cojocaru leaving Covent Garden for ENB. Osipova and Vasiliev left the Bolshoi for the upstart Mikhailovsky. Mathilde Froustey left the Paris Opera Ballet (!) for San Francisco. And let’s not even start on Sergei Polunin …
London Ballet, Just Like London Buses: You Wait Years for A New Nureyev –
– and then three of them turn up at once.
Maaaaaaaybe Ballet Dancers Get Pressured Into Eating Disorders At School
“The head of a leading charity for people affected by eating disorders has called for stricter regulations in dance schools over concerns that ballet dancers are not given enough support at a vulnerable age.”
New Bolshoi Director Says He’s A Simple Problem-Solver [VIDEO]
‘I am no revolutionary,” says Vladimir Urin, former general director of the Stanislavsky Musical Theatre, adding that he wants to investigate “decisions of the previous administration.”
Of Dance, Freedom, And Fundamentalism
Deposed Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi seemed to have a special animus against dance in general and ballet in particular; members of his Muslim Brotherhood had been forcibly breaking up dance performances. Islamic fundamentalists (not unlike their Christian counterparts) usually disapprove of the entire genre. Yet women in some Muslim countries have used dancing as a vehicle for protest and a means of personal liberation.