Category: dance

“I played in a team until I was 14. Up until then I was pretty fearless. But then it suddenly moves up to another level, the guys playing it get bigger and the game gets much rougher. I was a late developer and when that puck comes towards you, it does some damage.”

Sylvia Waters began her career with the company as a dancer in 1968 and Mr. Ailey chose Ms. Waters to lead the junior troupe in 1974.

“The instructor is down on his knees, peering between my legs, licking his lips like a pervert. ‘You’re a woman,’ he tells me, ‘naked from the waist down, walking across a glass floor. Everyone is watching you from below.’ As I walk mindfully across the room, he commands me not to act, but to be the ekisu, or essence, of that woman.”

“As I understand it, this conclusion is based on the rather narrow view that taking A level dance would only really be valuable to those students who wanted to specialise in dance for their career, contrasting this approach with that of those students who wish to specialise exclusively in ‘core academic subjects’. As someone who has made a highly pleasurable career combining science and dance, this makes me reel.”

“After weeks of pressure from the media the Royal Danish Theatre released on Tuesday a controversial report alleging that cocaine abuse is rampant among members of its ballet company. … However, large sections of the now-publicised report have been censored out – including almost all the passages about [artistic director Nikolaj] Hübbe.”

“The Morphoses solution — to be a project-based dance company that invites collaborations with artists from a variety of disciplines – is still a work in progress.”

Susan Shields: “Choreography is a lonely profession. You never know when you’re going to get your next commission. I’ve been very fortunate, but I’ve noticed a slump in the past few years. Companies can’t afford new work, so they have to bring old work back.”

Mikhail Messerer on national styles of ballet dancing: “The ballet world is ruled by YouTube, Russian performers are watching French performers and the other way around, and they take bits from each other, sometimes good and occasionally bad … everything is so mixed up now.”

Eighteen-year-old choreographer Andrew McNicol has created a 35-minute dance based on Joanne Harris’s 1999 novel for Britain’s National Youth Ballet.

American Ballet Theatre star Ethan Stiefel’s peripatetic dance life keeps him busy in New York and Europe. But now he’s headed way, way south to become the artistic director of Royal New Zealand Ballet.