Category: dance

“The dance troupe made two big mistakes – they were wearing camouflage shorts and vests and should never have ditched their cars in New York’s Lincoln Tunnel.
Armed police from the FBI swooped and pulled their guns on the group because they thought they were terrorists.”

“On Wednesday, the New York-based distributor of dance programming TenduTV announced that a select group of dance performances and movement-based short films will be among the initial offerings, available in December, for download on [iTunes].”

Entrepreneur Marc Kirschner founded TenduTV to help turn the popularity that serious dance videos (often posted without permission) enjoy on YouTube into actual income for cash-starved dance companies. And he hopes that his venture will inspire choreographers to create dance specifically for download.

The star of this four-and-a-half-minute version starts out doing a handstand on her partner’s hands and flapping her legs like wings. She finishes with a vertical split while on point on her partner’s head.

“I’m watching ten members of Wayne McGregor/Random Dance in rehearsal, with notebooks in their hands, scribbling furiously. The grey-haired men who are entering data into a laptop and adjusting the many HD cameras recording every angle are two of the world’s top cognitive scientists.”

“The grandeur of flamenco is that it is an art that has managed to bring in influence from every corner of our culture and recreate it with a language that is more powerful and newer.”

The company, which cut live music in 2006 due to a budget crisis, will use an orchestra for its annual run of Nutcracker and “other programs demanding live music” through at least 2012 – thanks to a donation from a board member.

“This Christmas, a mysterious influence has been at work among Britain’s four largest dance companies. Perhaps influenced by today’s dark times, Scottish Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Royal Ballet and Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures are all dancing a dark story of brutality – Cinderella.“

Claudia LaRocco: “I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the critical impulse to proclaim an art form kaput. I understand it even less bookending a 550-page tome dedicated to that same form. Perhaps it is best seen as a railing against one’s own mortality. Critics age, too, and for some of them the world that helped inspire their creative identity diminishes as they do, replaced by new generations who depart from what they held most dear.”

“This is Boston, the city that prides itself on being the Athens of America. To do a show here that’s compromised by having a recorded orchestra instead of one that’s in the orchestra pit is beneath Boston arts-goers.”