Category: dance

“[Polina] Kadiyska, 22, died today from injuries she received after being run down Sunday by a drunk, teenage driver” on Broad Street in South Philadelphia.

The 22-year-old Cuban, who joined English National Ballet last year, says, “Of course I’m proud to be his nephew, but it is difficult because when I dance often people don’t even call me by my name. It’s not, ‘There’s Yonah’; it’s, ‘There’s the nephew of Carlos Acosta.'”

The final program of 2011-12 has been cut from two performances to one (at a smaller theater); 14 of 19 dancers have been laid off, though several may be re-hired this fall.

Walter Sickert, who painted a notorious series of four images of dead women titled Camden Town Nudes as well as a work titled Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom, is the subject of choregrapher Liam Scarlett’s upcoming piece for the Royal Ballet.

“Sir Robert Helpmann’s first work for the fledgling Australian Ballet, in 1964, was inspired by a dream in which he saw a naked Katharine Hepburn on a dais surrounded by lyrebirds.”

Paige Kohler was headed for a professional career in ballet – until a car crash changed all that. “It was really difficult,” Kohler said. “You don’t realize how much it’s part of your life until it’s taken away — when you can’t do it anymore. It was really hard to be a normal person.”

“Nrityagram was founded in 1990 as a gurukul, or residential village of learning, by the actress Protima Bedi. … Her vivid personality and love affairs were one part of her legend, but another was her commitment to Indian classical dance, and in particular Odissi, of which she became by all accounts a compelling exponent. In essence Nrityagram remains as she had hoped: an idyllic place where it is not unusual for people to dance — usually with live musicians — morning, noon, and night.”

Rehearsal director Denise Vale “motivated and assessed, and urged them to dance from the heart, not the head, and to escape the yoke of formal training. ‘We do it because we’re animals,’ she said, above a pianist’s angular improvisations, as lithe bodies moved smoothly in unison in the mirrored room. ‘These are reactive forces. Animals are reactive. They don’t sit around and wait for their prey.'”

Japanese dancers Eiko and Koma, accompanied by the Kronos Quartet, take on their own history. But “we don’t even need the music,” Eiko said. “As a performer I’m not much more than a slime or a maggot.”

“Actors play romantic duos for one movie or so, or for a theatrical run, and then go their separate ways. So do opera singers. But ballet dancers unite for season after season, sometimes for years, and their teamwork involves a physical intimacy and mutual reliance shared only by the likes of ballroom superstars, figure skaters and stars of long-running TV romances.”