Category: dance

“On Thursday, and for almost a week thereafter, American Ballet Theatre is fielding something rich and strange: The Bright Stream, a comic ballet about a Soviet collective farm … Soon after its première, [the work] was snatched off the stage, on Stalin’s orders. … Then, in 2003, the Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky put it back together for the Bolshoi Ballet.”

One of the iconic moments of the popular BBC4 documentary series Agony and Ecstasy was seeing the down-to-earth, sweet-natured Daria Klimentov´, aged 38, being yelled at and humiliated by choreographer Derek Deane. Less than two years later, Klimentov´ is dancing better than ever; she and her new onstage partner are drawing comparisons to Fonteyn and Nureyev.

Alexei Ratmansky’s comic ballet Bright Stream has travesti roles for young men (the Ballet Dancer) and senior women (the “Anxious-to-be-younger-than-she-is Dacha Dweller”). Martine van Hamel, now 65, tried on a pair of pointe shoes and “the bones in my feet said, ‘Ah! Don’t do that!” And poor Cory Stearns couldn’t even tell which of his shoes was left and which was right.

The piece is Dave St-Pierre’s Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde!, running at Sadler’s Wells after a lot of advance press coverage. “To one critic, it was moving and tender, ‘truly remarkable and not to be missed’; to another, ‘a heap of ordure so ripe you could fertilise your petunias with it’.” (Petunias prefer urine, actually.)

During a performance of Dave St-Pierre’s Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde!, one of the dozen or so nude men clambering over and through the audience approached Observer dance critic Luke Jennings, tried to grab his notebook from his hands, then took off Jennings’s glasses and hawked phlegm on them. Jennings recounts the experience here.

“Now, for the first time, the museum’s concert series will host a site-specific dance performance within the sculpture-filled Engelhard Court. While performances have taken place in galleries before, choreographer Shen Wei is the first to design a work for a specific hall.”

“Riding the wave of the unprecedented ballet boom here, Korea’s four major ballet troupes” – Korea National Ballet, Universal Ballet Company, Seoul Ballet Theatre, and Gwangju City Ballet – “have gathered to host the first government-led ballet festival, starting June 12.”

“Ballet seasons are often identified with a dancer, and this spring City Ballet has been all about [Chase] Finlay, who is still a member of the corps de ballet. Naturally regal – his bearing is like that of a less uptight Mr. Darcy – he is the best thing to hit City Ballet” in several years.

“Now in its 11th year, LAVA has survived as an outsider in the dance world – and through a recession – by cultivating a loyal following from its Brooklyn headquarters, where it operates a school for acrobatics … presents a seasonal, free open-performance event … and rehearses for shows across the city and, increasingly, around the world.”

The Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas “is facing off against a breakaway burlesque show slated for June 4, the same weekend as the Hall’s annual fund-raiser.” The Hall of Fame has actually sued its upstart rival for “engaging in deceptive trade practices.”