Category: dance

How does a husband and wife team adapt, write and choreograph an adaptation of the confusing Euripides play Alcestis? They use Yiddish silent films and videos of horse wranglers, of course.

Contemporary arts stars Wayne McGregor, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Mark Wallinger talk about bringing their individual skills to a collaborative dance work.

“I felt like I was in a pressure cooker. I literally pictured myself in a pressure cooker being pressure steamed. Like, just sucked dry. Because I felt like it all came down to this — this one moment , and I’m on stage for an hour and 15 minutes. It was this one moment when I had to produce. I could not fail.”

“The Manitoba troupe was slated to bring its newest original ballet, the psychological drama Svengali, to Toronto for two dates in January before continuing onto Hamilton, Ont. and London, Ont.”

“After 12 years of creating dance, commissioning work from world-class choreographers, and opening a theater and studio in a converted mechanic’s shop, former Martha Graham principal dancer Jeanne Ruddy announced Monday that she was folding her Philadelphia modern dance company.”

For Andile Ndlovu, a 23-year-old member of Washington Ballet, “to be accepted into the rarefied world of classical dance – which in South Africa is traditionally seen as an elitist and a predominantly white preserve – the boy from the rough Soweto townships says he had to overcome outdated stereotypes” on both sides of the country’s racial divide.

Notoriously outspoken principal dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze: “I like David very much and respect him as a dancer, but it is an insult to the entire Russian ballet, a demonstration of indifference to the rich Russian tradition and culture.”

“The Music Center is giving birth to a splashy, blue-chip contemporary ballet company devoted to artistic experimentation, with a Hollywood pedigree, to boot. L.A. Dance Project, founded and directed by Benjamin Millepied, is being launched with a commission, expected to last two years, from Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center.”

Alastair Macaulay observes that countless Nutcrackers make far bigger unacknowledged borrowings from Lev Ivanov and George Balanchine than Beyoncé did from Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker – and that Balanchine himself, who borrowed freely from Petipa, said, “God creates – I assemble.”

He’s lured two of the Bolshoi’s biggest stars to his relatively unknown ballet company in St. Petersburg. Is he an example of new money ruining Russian traditions – or just into the Mikhailovsky?