Category: dance

“Does the Bessie committee not know what it’s looking at? Or does it exist in a time capsule where Judson Dance Theater, the artistic movement that ushered in postmodern dance and embraced pedestrian movement, never happened? Instead, there seems to be more attention focused on raising the profile of the Bessies than on artistic achievement.”

“Throughout his life Merce Cunningham came up with new ways to blend art and technology. … Now, three years after his death in 2009, Cunningham is again at the vanguard. On Friday the Aperture Foundation is to introduce its first interactive application for the iPad, ‘Merce Cunningham: 65 Years’.”

Yes, dear old Ben was evidently “America’s first stunt swimmer,” judging from a letter in which he describes performing feats for onlookers while swimming in the Thames. But the story really begins circa 1900 with a vaudevillian named Annette Kellerman. And then there was the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.

Boris Eifman “has mined the drama of the Tchaikovsky symphonies to create a ballet biography of the composer - a life told in dance, entitled simply Tchaikovsky. According to Eifman, Tchaikovsky was an artist consumed by a conflict between his orthodox faith and his sexuality.”

“Hammer thrower Sophie Hitchon reached the Olympic final yesterday” – setting a new British record in the process – “and then credited her years of ballet training for helping her deal with the 80,000 crowd cheering her on. … Amazingly, the blonde haired thrower said ballet and hammer throwing had actually complemented one another.”

“Even when you have seen it on television, it is hard to appreciate the full experience of live synchronized swimming. For one thing, the swimmers do everything synchronistically, including walking to the edge of the pool, which they do in an oddly exaggerated way, like mimes in bathing suits. Then, when they get there, they affix their nose plugs and perform short dance routines – this is called deck work – that generally end in a kind of unexpected tableau vivant, with them posing together in an artistic flourish.”

“Unfortunately, in these days of what appear to be an Olympian approach to ballet, such ballet artists [as Cynthia Gregory] are hard to find. And sadly, many ballet schools and major companies do not seem to be doing enough to preserve ballet’s greatest asset – its ability to transcend words and transport an audience into their world. Ballet technique that explodes with meaning instead of fireworks is vastly lacking.”

“Colin Peasley first agreed to do ballet under sufferance with two conditions: that it was a private lesson and he didn’t have to wear tights. More than 50 years later, Peasley, 77, is leaving the Australian Ballet as its longest-serving member, working as a principal dancer, educator and artist in residence at the company he founded in 1962.”

“Developing young dancers will be a new focus at American Ballet Theater. The company has announced the creation of a program for six dancers to work as apprentice members of Ballet Theater’s corps de ballet.”

“He has the aspect of a minister pulling people up to their ideals and articulating a big vision, which in his case is artistic but also, as he likes to point out, implicitly political. You can hear it in his cadence and timing when he teaches and works with dancers, and in his sense of mission and commitment.”