Category: dance

“Allison Orr’s jarringly visceral The Trash Project – in which 24 employees of Austin’s Solid Waste Services Department animate the cranes, lights, and other features of 16 trucks on an old airport tarmac – has been captured in a documentary film. Directed by Andrew Garrison, Trash Dance is receiving accolades right out of the gate; The film floored audiences and won a special jury prize at its world premiere last weekend at Austin’s South by Southwest festival.”

“The basic math was staggering: About 300 women and 60 men … showed up to try out for one job.” What the process “exposed about audition behavior, and how dancers can sabotage themselves, was painful to witness. … While movement quality and thought process is central, the ability to listen and take notes without attitude is essential. And rare.”

“Audrey Niffenegger, who has also worked as an artist and graphic novelist, is to collaborate with the [Royal Ballet’s] resident choreographer Wayne McGregor.”

The movement theatre company DV8’s new piece, Can We Talk About This?, “begins in 1985 and ends in the present day by way of a ‘greatest hits’ of Islam’s low-points. The Satanic Verses affair, the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, the publication of the Danish cartoons, ‘honour’-based killings, forced marriages and sharia law are among the events and subjects tackled.”

“The musicians’ union will be outside the doors of the Koch Theater on Tuesday night to protest the dance company’s decision to use canned music instead of a live orchestra. The move marks the first time there has been a ‘major performance’ in one of the main Lincoln Center halls without professional musicians.”

“Robert Swinston, a veteran company member, has applied to become the director of the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France. If appointed, he plans on bringing two former company members with him — Daniel Madoff and Melissa Toogood — and to start a small group that would perform Cunningham works as well as new dances.”

General manager Lea Lavie, who began working at the company in 2009 and replaced co-founder Hillel Markman on relatively short notice late last year, is working on eliminating an accumulated deficit of roughly $1.6 million, increasing audience (attendance has nearly doubled since she arrived), and introducing some basic business practices to the company’s administration.

The impetuous Ukrainian dancer, who famously walked away from his Royal Ballet position in January, commissioned a former Covent Garden colleague, Valentino Zucchetti, to create a solo work about the impetuous 1950s movie star, a longtime hero for Polunin.

Says the Spanish choreographer, artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company, “It’s terrible. I’m literally not even awake and the first thing I’m checking is Twitter.” He plans to live-tweet Tuesday’s premiere of his new work 2 One Another.