Category: dance

The company’s operating surplus was only $61,651, down from the 2009 surplus of $220,131. But the company “staged 23 works in 2010, up from the 18 in 2009 and 17 the year before that, during the global financial crisis.” Subscription renewals are up, as are donations, though corporate sponsorship fell by 1%.

“Corella founded his company in 2007 as the first classical ballet company in Spain in 22 years. … He had hoped to wait until retirement [from performing] to start his company but things came together more quickly and success has been greater than he expected. ‘We’re always sold out and lines go for hours. The royal family is involved …'”

Mary Helen Bowers, the former New York City Ballet dancer who trained Natalie Portman, has a fitness company called Ballet Beautiful. “Publicity surrounding the training convinced non-dancers that Bowers’ fitness regimen could work for them … [and] membership has skyrocketed in the last six months – up a whopping 5,000 percent.”

“Winners from three age-based divisions, chosen from some 90 hopefuls from 23 countries, took to the stage with fellow competitors and professional dancers to spin through excerpts ranging from Perrot’s “Giselle” to Petipa’s “Swan Lake” and modern pieces including Edwaard Liang’s “As Above So Below” and Margo Sappington’s “Christina’s World,” each of which dancers learned from a video and performed in the competition.”

“It’s unlike any ballet you’ve ever seen – a swarm of swirling particles gradually form the shape of a dancer and transform into a lifelike model before they explode into digital bits for the grand finale. This performance, dubbed Dancing Atoms, is the result of a collaboration between ballet dancer Roberto Bolle and a team lead by researchers at [MIT].”

Long-and-pointy-toed cowboy boots, that’s what. Very long and very pointy – some of them look like skis or colored elephant tusks. (And it’s men wearing them, not women.)

“D’Amboise admitted he was spoiled as a dancer, with Balanchine, especially, letting him do whatever he wanted. Surprisingly, this did not include running City Ballet after the choreographer’s death in 1983.”

The five-year-old company’s dancers are used to performing mostly short, modernist works. “When you finally realize your company is ready to do a full-length ballet such as Giselle, which is so dramatic and so tragic and classically beautiful,” said co-director Colleen Neary, “you realize how far you have come.”

The American Ballet Theatre principal dancer has withdrawn from the first two weeks of the company’s high-profile spring season at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. The nature of the injury was not disclosed.

A Q&A with Janek Schergen, who was Goh’s ballet master for seven years (until Goh’s death in 1987 at age 39) and is now artistic director of the foundation that holds the rights to all of the Singaporean choreographer’s works.