Category: dance

“She evidently lacked the dynamic virtuosity of her contemporary Karsavina … Her technique was, by modern standards, limited. But what she did have was a unique charm, matched to a lithe but wiry physique (including an exceptionally long, pliant neck and high-arched feet) which gave her musculature a feline ease and sensuality.”

So how many does it take? The image goes viral – do the count for yourself.

One Canadian dancer thinks so.

“Financial strain and concerns over management have prompted seven board members of the Charleston Ballet Theatre, including President Charles Patrick, to resign in recent days.”

The new full-length version of the fairy tale is a co-commission of the Dutch National Ballet, where it will premiere this December, and San Francisco Ballet, which will present the work in 2013.

“Bob Hercules didn’t set out to become the Ken Burns of the American dance world. But for the last three years, the Chicago-based documentary film writer and director has turned his focus on two of the country’s high-profile dance ensembles: the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and the Joffrey Ballet.”

Ballet Next, founded last year by former ABT principal Michele Wiles and former NYCB principal Charles Askegard is launching a new series of “exhibitions” in a small performing space that “will combine well-known choreography, new works, and discussions among dancers, musicians, choreographers and audience members.”

Says artistic director Ashley Wheater, “The Joffrey has a phenomenal history, and in my time” – he danced with the company in the 1980s – “there was an incredibly eclectic repertoire. We did Ashton and Fokine but also Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp, William Forsythe. But in the last 20 years the company did very little new work.” Wheater has just changed that.

How Brenda Dixon Gottschild came to write the biography of Philadelphia’s Joan Myers Brown, legend of African-American dance.

“The upper-class ballet lovers watching the curtain go up on opening night of Giselle in 1841 were sitting on a time bomb, and they knew it.”