Category: dance

“My first enquiries hit a brick wall. ‘There isn’t an underground in any coherent sense,’ said [one well-connected editor] … Even those who passionately believe in the alternative scene weren’t happy about the Guardian poking around.” Rejoined the director of a small dance space, “If you write about it, it will no longer be the underground, will it? So don’t do it. Stop it right now. Go AWAY!”

The idea underpinning Graeme Murphy’s new Mod Dance Company is “that contemporary dance can be more commercial – ‘with integrity’, he is quick to add. ‘I always believed that [Sydney Dance Company] had commercial potential that it wasn’t in a position to make the most of’.”

Line in dance has many meanings. A show at the Museum of Modern Art approaches lines and dance in the narrowest terms. A pity.

“YouTube: It’s changed the dance landscape. So much of our dance past is posted on YouTube (and other sites, like dancemedia.com) that we are awash in our past. I think the reason visual artists started appropriating way before dancers did is that their past is out there, in galleries and museums, for anyone to snatch ideas from.”

“How should we react today to ‘Bojangles of Harlem,’ the extended solo in the 1936 film Swing Time in which Fred Astaire, then at the height of his fame, wears blackface to evoke the African-American dancer Bill Robinson? No pat answer occurs … [This] is no traditional blackface number.”

“The modern ballet Reflections faces a stern test from Russian audiences known for their rigid ideas about classical dance after scoring a victory with critics in the United States. … The top theatres in Moscow and St. Petersburg have been inviting modern dance companies to stage productions, but much of the Russian public remains hostile to modern dance, considering it ‘undeserving of Russian talent’.”

Mary Helen Bowers trained Natalie Portman for “The Black Swan.” She “has created Ballet Beautiful, a workout that can be taken privately in person or online through Skype. Classes run 30 or 60 minutes, individually or in a group with the others all logged in via Skype from their own locations.”

Daniel Ezralow: “Dancers like to be rooted. They aren’t trying to defy gravity. But in this show, they’re picked up without their control, which is scary. A talented aerial performer makes it look natural, like he’s doing it all by himself. The rest freeze up.”

Alain Platel of Les Ballets C de la B “has never been a dancer but came to choreography from a former career as a specialist teacher working with children with multiple disabilities. He had been immersed in the language of impairment, with its tics, involuntary spasms and unco-ordinated movements.”