Category: dance

These events – individual and group numbers; tap, ballet, or “shuffle step for Jesus” – “form their own distinct subculture. Yet they are also distinctly American, not so different, underneath the false eyelashes, from Little League games, and raising a host of issues revolving around class, gender and parents’ aspirations for their children” – issues foregrounded, if not aggravated, by the Lifetime reality series Dance Moms.

“Those who took the tango and meditation classes both showed greater reductions in depression than those who did neither. But the tango students lowered their stress more than either the meditation students or those on the waiting list. And in something of a surprise, the tango students reported a greater increase in mindfulness.”

“The company – which was founded by [artistic director Nadya Timofeeva’s] mother, Bolshoi prima ballerina Nina Timofeeva – used to be an old-style Russian ballet troupe in the shadow of the Bolshoi. But recently it has dared to embark on a new path.”

“Over the past several years choreographers have been rethinking what constitutes a stage. The more options, the better, which is why the new BAM Fisher building at the Brooklyn Academy of Music was designed with a flexible 250-seat theater in which choreographers and others can do whatever they want, however they want.” Four leading dancemakers talk about how they’ll be using the space.

Music and dance have not been banned under most forms of Islam – but some of the Taliban’s beliefs fall in line with fundamentalist Christian fears over dancing and, er, immoral acts.

As a 12-year-old in South Carolina, Brooklyn Mack convinced his mom to take him to ballet lessons because he thought it would make him better at football. (Which it would.) Now he’s a principal at the Washington Ballet and the first African-American male to win a gold medal at the Varna competition.

The Australian Ballet’s current program of seminal works in the company’s (and country’s) history includes two works (out of three) that focus on football. Says choreographer Graeme Murphy, “I’m having to teach some of the dancers what a drop-kick is. It’s a lost artform.”

“The NBC took the decision on Tuesday night ‘after the SA government’ ongoing delays in the payment of the funding required to secure and arrange the tour and in providing assistance with the required logistical details.”

“Classical Indian dancer and choreographer Menaka Thakkar has won the 2012 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.” Among previous winners of the $30,000 award, given by the Canada Council for the Arts, are choreographer Margie Gillis, composer R. Murray Schafer, and theatre director Richard Rose.