Said outgoing artistic director Monica Mason in response to a query, “I have not commissioned any female choreographers to make work for The Royal Ballet during my tenure as Director because, quite simply, I have not come across one that I felt was suitable. Choreography is not a gender issue – it is an issue of talent.”
Category: dance
Watch Monica Mason During Her Dancing Days
“This week Monica Mason makes her official farewell to Royal Ballet – the company she joined as a dancer in 1958, and which she has directed since 2002.”
England’s Northern Ballet Launches ‘Try-Before-You-Buy’ Scheme
“In an effort to reach out to new audiences, Northern Ballet is offering customers are chance to watch dress rehearsals before committing to buying tickets for performances.”
Sure, Ted Shawn Founded Jacob’s Pillow, But He’s A Problematic Icon
“In his 1926 treatise The American Ballet, for instance, Shawn denigrated women (who greatly outnumbered men in the field), African Americans (he saw popular dances rooted in African American traditions, like the Charleston, as a threat to dance as an art-with-a-capital-A), and any immigrant without claim to an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ heritage (he was interested in creating a purely ‘American’ art form), in the service of his own mission.”
Video Valentines To Mr. B
Author and former New York City Ballet dancer Toni Bentley writes of coming across YouTube tributes (which include some very rare images) to George Balanchine and to one of his first ballerinas, Tamara Toumanova – made by the latter’s first cousin thrice removed, a teenaged pianist in Tbilisi.
Sorting Out The Messy Villella Situation At Miami City Ballet
HuffPo provides a guide to the claims and counterclaims being made about Edward Villella’s contentious departure from the company he founded and built.
Dancers Invade The Home Of The Large Hadron Collider
“In the hushed library of CERN’s headquarters on the Swiss-French border, a dancer, moving slowly and nimbly, climbs up to the top of a bookshelf and then hangs off it. Elsewhere another dancer, also dressed in everyday clothes, soundlessly crawls under the chair of an unsuspecting physicist.”
Study: Dance Lessons Mitigate Pressure For Young Girls To Be “Sexy”
Dance training appears to be “a protective factor against young girls’ sexualization,” the researchers write.
Edinburgh Festival Won’t Cancel Batsheva Dance Co., Protests Or No
“The organisers of the Edinburgh International Festival have said they will not bow to pressure after pro-Palestinian campaigners called for an invitation to an Israeli dance company to be withdrawn. Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company is due to perform three shows at the event between August 30 and September 1, as part of a UK-wide tour.”
Is Dance An Endangered Profession?
“A young woman started to cry as she described her personal struggles with a career in dance, and the difficulty of working multiple jobs in the service industry without access to adequate health care or insurance. This could be you. This could be your dance student. … Why would anyone actually want to enter this profession?”