Category: dance

The renowned choreographer was the Toronto company’s artistic director from 1996 to 2005; after resigning, he opened a bakery in an Ontario village and largely withdrew from the dance world. Now he’s back, and current artistic director Karen Kain has reopened the relationship by commissioning a new ballet from him.

“Launched quietly, their company features nine krumpers and street dancers from L.A. and beyond — black and Latino, male and female — with a mixed-bill program of dance for indoor proscenium stages.”

“For a company with no executive director, development director, or permanent artistic director, a remarkable sense of passion and purpose appears to have set in, alongside a frank acknowledgement of the deep problems the troupe faces.”

Reports from Moscow indicate that the police investigating the maiming of ballet director Sergei Filin are now officially considering certain company members, unnamed as yet, to be suspects.

Currently the company’s most famous dancer and the most public enemy of ballet director/attack victim Sergei Filin and of the Bolshoi’s administration, Tsiskaridze has publicly alleged that whatever was thrown into Filin’s face couldn’t have been sulfuric acid because his wounds weren’t serious enough.

“The Bolshoi Ballet administration threatened to file a lawsuit against the dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze on Friday, after he called for the theater’s top executives to be dismissed over its response to the Jan. 17 acid attack on the ballet’s artistic director, Sergei Filin.”

“Amid the scramble, some timely opportunities have presented themselves. One was the sudden revival of an idea that had been kicking around for years: to dance without sets.”

“Camping along the way, Ms. Monson and a few colleagues danced on beaches and in parks. They danced in front of school groups and people just passing by. They gave workshops embodying ideas about animal perception and flocking through improvisational exercises and held panel discussions with zoologists and environmental scientists.”

After announcing it would shut down in mid-March, the British Columbia-based company garners enough donations to close out the season – and maybe keep going.

The outspoken-to-a-fault, controversy-prone principal dancer, a big media star in Russia, says that his enemies are persecuting him with methods reminiscent of Stalinism – including spreading rumors that he’s behind the acid attack on Sergei Filin. He is demanding that the Kremlin replace the theater’s top management (and he’ll be happy to step in for them).