Category: dance

“The children’s piece of this economic puzzle didn’t sink in for me until I went to the show last week and listened to all the families around me, ooing and ahhing as they watched their kids prance around the stage in snowflake and soldier costumes. There are 440 children who are members of the cast. About 30 to 50 kids are in the show each night. So let’s figure it out. Each child’s family, in addition to the proud parents, might have grannies, grandpas, aunts, uncles, friends, brothers and sisters. And they all go to the Nutcracker, some several times.”

‘Apparently, the artistic direction has moved solely into the hands of the board of directors.’

Mark Goldweber, a former stalwart of the Joffrey Ballet who became ballet master at the Salt Lake City company and directed its young-dancer troupe, died last week of cancer at the age of 53.

“You take four weeks of nightly productions at the Warner Theatre, and they all have to eat dinner, park their cars, and all have their brothers and sisters and neighbors, and they go to eat at Chef Geoff’s across the street, and then there are all those bottles of wine. This is big business for the District.”

“The whole body is played like a percussion instrument in African dance,” says the choreographer of “Fela!”

Meet Frédéric Flamand, the new director of the Cannes International Dance Festival. He “embodies every notion you might ever have had of an intellectual European” and says, “Dance is the best means we have to speak of our place in society today.”

With no plans announced for a 2012 season, and a board that may be making backroom decisions about artistic leadership, the dancers of Ballet San Jose don’t know what to expect.

“Not coming from a classical ballet background has been really good for me … My early loves were film and theatre and that’s really where I get all of my imagery from. And … I think it connects with audiences in a much stronger way because of that.”