Category: dance

“I first started getting distracted by stand-ins during 1980s bopsicals such as Flashdance, in which Jennifer Beals clearly wasn’t doing her own bum-spinning … or Footloose, when Kevin Bacon clearly wasn’t turning his own mid-air somersaults, or … you get the picture.”

“Dermot Burke has stepped down as director of the Dayton Ballet after 18 years in the dual capacity of chief executive and artistic director.”

“Elements in The Nutcracker may be unrecognisable in Firecracker but they are, assuredly, idiosyncratically Hong Kong. The ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ scene, for instance, has the flashy, legendary ‘Seven Princesses’ in Hong Kong’s silver screen dancing side by side with some puppet-like royal family.”

“[B]allet master in chief Peter Martins on Tuesday admitted driving while ability impaired. … The 64-year-old Martins was arrested New Year’s Day at a police checkpoint near his home in Irvington, a village just north of New York City.”

“The £12m structure, at Quarry Hill, has been described as the largest purpose-built space for dance outside London. … The six-storey building includes seven dance studios, a 230-seater studio theatre along with wardrobe facilities, meeting rooms, a hot tub, sauna and physiotherapist facilities.”

“This weekend the Grand Theatre at Hong Kong’s Cultural Centre will host the last performances in Asia by the storied Merce Cunningham Dance Company, preparing to dissolve after 58 years. But the significance of these final shows seems lost on Hong Kong.”

“For the past 10 years, [he] has been artistic director of the Danish Dance Theatre, now one of the leading contemporary companies in Scandinavia and very much his baby. … [He] has found liberation in the smaller, less ‘suffocating’ world of Danish dance.”

“Among the many descriptions of Wayne McGregor’s dance creations, the one closest to the mark is this: watching his work is like being licked by a panther’s juicy, rasping tongue while you’re revising maths.” (A bow to David Jays of London’s Sunday Times)

“At a time when Hollywood studios are fixated on cookie-cutter movies with built-in audience recognition, “Black Swan” is a hit from the entirely opposite direction: dream-like, ambiguous and even polarizing. It even raises the question of whether there’s a larger audience for original, unpredictable films than the studios may believe.”

“In Israel, a nation marked by divides everywhere, a slender peace is being brokered between the religious and secular in an unexpected arena, contemporary dance” – with a movement vocabulary drawn from the swaying of devout Jews at prayer.