Category: dance

“If I had the choice I’d be a boxer or a footballer. Being a ballet dancer isn’t cool. Football, boxing, hockey – they’re cool. And you make more money.”

“Take a look at video of the recently dismissed Royal Winnipeg Ballet dancer Jeppe Hansen as he practises his steps and does the splits, in his bulbous leotard, every muscle engorged. … When did the idea of ballet as highbrow spiritualism take hold? Do the wealthy few who now patronize the art have to think that their appreciation of young bodies is in no way voyeuristic, but a kind of abstracted aestheticism, so as to justify it?”

Svetlana Zakharova, one of Russia’s most famous dancers, was to take the role of Tatiana opposite US visitor David Hallberg in several of this month’s performances of the John Cranko ballet. But last week, when she discovered she had not been scheduled to perform on opening night, she stormed out of rehearsal and refused to return to the theater.

“I think it’s time to recognize that we have with us dancers who are great partly because of their work with living choreographers. They are not only goddesses, but muses too.”

“Russia’s flagship ballet company is as tough as titanium. It outlived both the Tsarist autocracy that founded it and the Soviet junta that adopted it.”

“An aspiring ballet star is accusing the Royal Winnipeg Ballet of unfairly kicking him out of its school after he began acting in pornographic videos.”

To some, an American ballerina has always been a virtual contradiction in terms.

“New York City ticket sales are up, he says. And, well, City Ballet is still here: When you’re talking about legacy, that’s not nothing.”

“The Mariinsky needs a very strong leader, someone who has a mind of his own, but Yuri is easily influenced. He has made the company very flat.”