Category: dance

The Royal Opera House jumps on the bandwagon of arts organizations that want young audiences live-tweeting and blogging ballet … especially a ballet that’s broadcast to more than 700 movie houses around the world.

“Since founding the Australian dance company Chunky Move in 1995, [Gideon] Obarzanek has consistently pushed the boundaries of how contemporary dance can be viewed and understood through mining his omnivorous interests in theater, film, visual art, science and technology.” But now he’s handing over Chunky Move. Why?

“The tale of professional dancer’s pay is a very long story that’s never going away but things have reached a new low with the revelation that dancers working on the English National Opera production The Death Of Klinghoffer are being paid just £327 for what amounts to a 40 hour working week during rehearsals.”

“As a Marine, Sgt. Roman Baca spent eight months in Fallujah between 2005 and 2006.” A few months after he came home, his girlfriend (now wife) said, “You are not OK. You are not the same person I knew before the war. What can I do to help you?” A bit nervously, “Mr. Baca admitted that he always wanted to start a dance company. Her response: ‘Let’s do it’.”

“The stage, that’s the only time I enjoy really. I don’t enjoy my working, killing myself during the day for eight hours. … You perform twice in a whole month but for the whole month you rehearse. Which is the really boring part. I hate that part. … I don’t believe you have to do classes to be good. … What I hate the most is waking up in the morning.”

Wendy Perron: “I have no problem with a critic getting sarcastic once in a while. … What I object to is excessive snark, either in frequency or intensity. … I do think that the snark habit is destructive – not only to dancers’ psyches but also to ticket sales, bookings, and reputations.”

“[Rehearsal is] very hard physical work and it can sometimes be very boring as well, learning stuff. … I would not mind just waking up, knowing I have seven hours before a show, doing [a dance] I already know, and then doing my own thing.”

“Breaking Pointe, a six-episode documentary series, will air sometime this summer on The CW. … It’s not a competition show, it’s a documentary.”

“[D]ancer-choreographer Kate Watson-Wallace and choreographer-poet-impresario Jaamil Kosoko [have] rechristened anonymous bodies, Watson-Wallace’s company, as a joint collaborative for the pair’s work.”

“Under Mr. Kylian’s 24-year directorship, the company acquired international fame for the resonance and beauty of its dancing … But Mr. Kylian stepped down as artistic director in 1999. In marketing-speak, Nederlands Dans Theater has a branding problem: How to reconstruct its identity while remaining faithful to the heritage of Mr. Kylian’s work.”