Girodano Dance Chicago marks a milestone in the Second City, but not without challenges – and advantages: “Having a Chicago mayor who once took classes with your company doesn’t hurt.”
Category: dance
Yes, We Still Need (And Can Encourage) Black Ballerinas
“It is also a mistake to hold the art form hostage to 19th century ideals of beauty in which pale skin was equated with goodness and dark with evil. No thinking person would allow him or herself to indulge in these kinds of discrimination, but such prejudices persist below the level of thought.”
Benjamin Millepied Wants To Kick Up Dust In L.A.
“Mr. Millepied, 35, moved to Los Angeles – where his new wife, Natalie Portman, resides – and started his own company. Sorry: ‘curatorial collective.’ He says he will create new dances, revive seminal works and generally kick up dust by collaborating in unusual ways with various arts organizations here.”
By Fattening Up A Bit, Ballerinas Are Saving Their Art And Themselves
Deirdre Kelly: “Medical experts have, since the 1970s when Balanchine-inspired eating disorders first started decimating the ballerina population, quite forcefully determined that ballet’s tyranny of thin is detrimental to dancers’ health. … Ballerinas today are again embracing the breasts and hips which first made them objects of desire way back in the day.”
National Ballet Of Canada Tours Abroad For The First Time In A Decade
“The Toronto-based National Ballet has not toured to Los Angeles in 35 years, and it is making the U.S. debut of its new production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, created by British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon … [It’s] an important chance for the company to show its international stature, after a decade in which it hasn’t been possible to tour outside Canada – because it’s just too expensive.”
Thirty Years Of Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet
“It took King years to find the right balance of stylistic elements, but there is little doubt that he is redefining ballet for a generation that wouldn’t find itself within a mile of Swan Lake. And, as a kind of apotheosis, Jennifer Homans, the notoriously demanding dance critic of The New Republic, has pronounced King one of dance’s great hopes for the future.”
Turning Puccini’s La Bohème Into A Ballet
Milwaukee Ballet music director Andrews Sill was skeptical about undertaking such an adaptation – until he discovered that Puccini and his publishers sanctioned all sorts of adaptations (as long as they made money). Sill believes a Bohème-without-words works well – and it allows choreographer Michael Pink to make what he sees as a crucial rebalancing of the lead characters.
Dance Theatre Of Harlem Is Back
“Only a year ago, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s rehearsal studios at 466 W. 152nd St. were quiet. …. There were no professional dancers, only students who one day hoped to make it to the world stage. And now, after an eight-year hiatus brought on by a $2.3 million debt, the studios are alive again as DTH prepares to launch its 2012-2013 season.”
Why Milwaukee Ballet Did Away With The Principal-Soloist-Corps System
Artistic director Michael Pink: “I don’t subscribe to the class structure; I mean especially an organization where there’s so few dancers – if you have 25, 24 dancers, they’re all going to have to work equally well … You see the obvious people that can do those things, and I think we have less ego and less ego issues – we don’t have any issues with anybody who assumes they’re greater than anyone else, and that’s lovely.”
Matthew Bourne’s Designer On How They Work Together
Lez Brotherston: “Matt doesn’t come to me and say, ‘Oh, I want to have male swans’ … Matt looks at everything I draw, and one idea spins off to the next. Some of what we come up with is rubbish, and Matt changes his mind at every meeting, which can be frustrating and brilliant. But the whole thing becomes so enmeshed that we can’t remember whose idea is whose.”