Category: dance

“Before she could even tackle the choreography she had to prepare her body, starting more than a year in advance with Mary Helen Bowers, a former City Ballet dancer … Wherever Ms. Portman’s career took her, she trained at least five hours a day with Ms. Bowers, practicing chaînés turns in Bridgehampton or rond de jambes in Belfast.”

One of the juicy tidbits in Jennifer Homans’s book Apollo’s Angels is a description of Luigi Manzotti’s wildly popular 1881 spectacular Excelsior. The ballet depicted everything from the Spanish Inquisition to the invention of the steamboat to the harnessing of electricity to the building of the Suez Canal.

“Called Transition Scheme for Dancers, the initiative seeks to gain a better understanding of the career paths of dancers and the usefulness of existing schemes for them when they retire, such as Dancers Career Development in the UK.”

“The performances of “Romeo and Juliet” in June 2011 will mark the first time the Royal Ballet has danced at an arena venue in Britain. They can normally be found at the plush Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.”

“The designer of a fairytale ballet is far, far more important than the choreographer. It’s those visions that lodge themselves in children’s heads, in adults’ memories, embedded with the music. And at no time more potently than Christmas when it’s time for The Nutcracker and Cinderella.” A Q&A with the designers of two new versions of these ballets.

There’s “one by the Tucson Regional Ballet (not to be confused with the Ballet Tucson) that features ‘a battle between coyotes and the U.S. Cavalry, a journey over the glistening, falling snow of Mt. Lemmon to a Desert Dream of Chili Peppers, Mama Piñata and the waltzing Desert Poppies.’ … Maybe another year’s stop in Boston could include both An Urban Nutcracker (Ballet Rox) and also The Slutcracker.”

The Original of Laura was only published (against the dying wishes of its author) one year ago, and already it has been adapted into a dance work: Laura premieres this week in Moscow. (Just how a stageable story was made out of the somewhat inscrutable 138 catalogue cards Nabokov left behind is not revealed.)

“[In] her book, [Homans] argues that ballet companies have become ‘museums for the old,’ that too many dancers have traded artistry for ‘unthinking athleticism,’ that choreography ‘veers from unimaginative imitation to strident innovation.’ Do professional dance makers and observers agree? We asked a few for their reactions.” (Readers chime in as well.)

“I’m trying to find the answers to burning questions like, what is the nature of the body? What is the potential of the body? How is our body connected together? I’ve also done a lot of research with scientists who analyze the workings of the brain.”

“Apollo’s Angels” traces four centuries of ballet — from its origins in 16th-century France to its elevation in the court of Versailles, through the Renaissance, Bolshevism, modernism and the cold war — describing the dance’s evolutions and revolutions in the context of political, philosophical and aesthetic currents.