Category: dance

“Many performance and rehearsal spaces, especially those south of 34th Street, are still without power, including the Joyce, The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Gibney Dance Center, Peridance, and Dance New Amsterdam.” Not only are performances called off, but until the power’s back on, there’s a major shortage of class space.

Last winter saw the ouster of Dennis Nahat, the company’s founding artistic director, and serious dissension on the board and within the community. Now the organization is getting a fresh start with the hiring of former ABT star Wes Chapman as artistic adviser, who’s renewing the repertory and adding dancers.

In Session, the dancers’ movement vocabulary comes from Ohad Naharin, their artistic director, and house choreographer Sharon Eyal, but the rules (such as they are) determining where they move and when are vrey much along the lines of an old Merce Cunningham-John Cage happening. (A DJ determines the music on the spot, without dancer input.)

State law exempts from sales tax “dramatic or musical arts performances,” including “choreographic” performances. The question was whether a private lap dance or a pole dance qualifies as a “dance.” Clearly, they should.

Alastair Spalding: “Dance is now second only to football as the most popular activity amongst school children and ranks first among girls … We are currently reaping the rewards that the investment in dance education has brought us … The route to a career in dance is now under threat.”

There, “ballet is big business and local competitions set the barre. Japanese dancers now populate every major ballet company on the planet, and Japanese students are taking top prizes at highly rated competitions such as the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland and Youth America Grand Prix in New York.”

Joan Acocella: “Bausch had certain gifts that were all her own – above all, the ability to create scenes that told serious psychological truths, but in an oblique, semi-abstract, wholly physical way, which made them powerful and discomforting. Surrealist, I guess we should call them.”

That’s right, it’s time to party like it’s 1799 with the return of the waltz. (Seriously. Yep.)

Jóhann Jacobs, executive director of Utah’s Ballet West: “I tend to block out horrible memories, but those were times when we lived very much day-to-day. … We knew our future vision was there in the distance, but it was very hard to find.”

Kevin Garland has been with the National for Ten years. The company has an operating surplus and an endowment of $40 million, despite the economic downturn. National Ballet board chair David Binet praised Garland for her “astute business acumen” and “passion for the art form.”