Category: dance

Wendy Perron stumbles across the 1954 Hollywood western-musical on cable television and marvels anew at the choreography and the cast.

Though Breandán de Gallaí did manage to win the All-Ireland championship, he “had a streak of originality that did not endear him to the judges monitoring the orthodoxy of Irish dance competitions … his long hair and flashy leg beats raised disapproving eyebrows.” His and others’ struggles with the genre’s conformity have led him to create a work titled Noctú (Irish for “bare” or “stripped”).

“His views of dance … include those who aren’t dancing, those who can’t dance well yet, those who once danced but can do so no longer, and a great many of those who can but happen not to be doing so just now. … [C]ertainly no great artist has ever returned to the mechanics and sociology of the professional dancer’s art more often than Degas or has understood them so well.”

After a salon tango competition in which a Colombian couple and no Argentines placed, the host country dominated the stage tango contest, with Argentine couples landing the top four spots at the close of the finals.

“Police seized 330 pounds of cocaine hidden in ballet shoes in an eastern Paris apartment today. … The ballet shoes arrived at the Charles de Gaulle airport last week, and four Dominicans were arrested on sight after receiving a tip about the shipment’s arrival.”

Fantastical comic images appear on scrolls onstage; the dancers mimic the shapes … The Belgian choreographer and and composer Nitin Sawhney are making a new piece based on the work of Japanese manga visionary Osamu Tezuka.

“Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures company has announced that 22-year-old James Cousins has won the inaugural New Adventures Choreographer Award (NACA). … The judges, who were ‘bowled over by the standard’ of applications, also decided to create a runner-up prize which has been awarded to 19-year-old Tom Jackson Greaves.”

“A vibrating dance floor and ‘aroma jockeys’ spreading scents are set to bring a new kind of disco experience to London that can be enjoyed by deaf as well as hearing clubbers.”

Larissa Ponomarenko, who thrilled Boston audiences in both classical and modern ballets, turns her technique to teaching. “Every chapter in life or in nature ends at some point,’’ she says. “Of course, dancing onstage, nothing can compare to that.’’