Category: dance

The ballet troupe which was founded as “Morphoses: The Wheeldon Company” was in a bind after Christopher Wheeldon abruptly left the organization in February. “His co-founder and the company’s director, Lourdes Lopez, said on Wednesday that a different artistic director will be put in place each season. First on the list is Luca Veggetti, the Italian stage director and choreographer.”

The company Pro Danza, directed by Alicia and Fernando Alonso’s daughter Laura, started out as “something of a second-company within the National Ballet of Cuba, and served as a fast-track to stage time. It is now an independent operation with more than 40 company dancers, 200 students and 10 teachers” – and an international network of supporters.

Judith Mackrell: “[In] a culture where choreographers are pressured to create within standard formats – 30 minutes for a triple-bill piece, 60-90 minutes or more for a full evening’s work – I think we’re missing the point of the very short work, its zest and its challenge. For experimental choreographers, the five- to 15-minute slot is ideal – serious ideas can be addressed without becoming sermons.”

“We come equipped with a cultural depth to reach across all differences to a culture of like minds. There is nothing that can judge a civilization’s imprint clearer than the artwork it leaves behind. So it is not our purpose here to do anything but to speak of our cultural sameness.

“Silvia Robinson knows her ballet and she knows how she likes it: classical. Or so this 70-year-old Cuban widow believed before she saw what’s being billed as the Stars of New York City Ballet perform works by Christopher Wheeldon and Jerome Robbins at the Mella Theater [in Havana] on Monday.”

At the American Dance Festival in 2004, Indian kathak dancer Pandit Chitresh Das encountered tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith practicing in a hallway. ”Whatever Jason was doing with his tap shoe I was doing with my bare feet. He turned around and said ‘Man, what are you doing?'” Within three days, they were performing together, and the makings of their show Tap Kathak was born.”

Daniel Phoenix Singh and his dance company, Dakshina, have embarked on a project to acquire and revive all of the pioneering choreographer’s 30 existing works. “How did this Indian immigrant become enmeshed in the biting social commentary of a leftist Jewish woman?”

“Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet” takes the measure of the last four centuries, showing us exactly when and why the unlikely art of ballet came into being, and how, growing more unlikely with every century, it evolved and survived.

“With a new artistic director, Virginia Johnson — whose career at Dance Theater, where she was a founding member, lasted 28 years — the organization has a five-year plan that includes bringing the company back to life in 2013.”

“A full-length version of the romantic ballet Giselle will be among the works Jose Navas will be creating for Ballet BC during the next three years as the company’s new resident choreographer.” Navas, an internationally known dance-maker, is artistic director of Montreal’s Compagnie Flak.