Category: dance

“Some 300 cinemas in 22 countries around the world will show real-time ballets staged by Russia’s Bolshoi Theater starting from December 19.” For the first season, the simulcasts will be offered in ten European countries, the US, Japan and Australia.

Downtown Manhattan in the 1960s “was a time, in particular, when choreographers and visual artists formed a new bond, collaborating and influencing each other. The results changed both stage and gallery for ever.”

“The truth is, she danced when she was little, but when I first saw her in class, I thought: How am I going to turn this person into a ballerina in three months? I didn’t think it was going to work. … [But she] was able to start to make her body do it. She’s not going to get the credit she deserves, but it was amazing what she’s done.”

“[Nina] Falaise uses the tiny threads of residual hearing she has to hear the lowest notes in music – low notes which she says she ‘treasures very much’. Like many deaf people, she has a small amount of hearing that she utilises to the maximum. Falaise also senses music through vibrations – much the same vibrations as a hearing person will sense in a loud concert.”

“If you don’t have enough money to use gigantic orchestral music with a giant orchestra, don’t choreograph to it. There’s always a pianist who’s eager and maybe you can afford. … A recording of a performance is a recording of a performance. It’s not the performance. … And, you know, I’m not saying, ‘Shame on everybody for not doing that, doing what I do,’ ’cause it’s of course expensive and complicated.”

“She is a celebrity in Europe, and her work has had a major impact on the dance scene there. Yet strangely, upcoming performances [in NYC and New Jersey] mark the first time in more than 20 years that her dances have been seen in the United States. It’s tempting to call these engagements a homecoming … But what gives a place the right to be called home?”

With a dynamic new executive director and a spacious new (and paid-for) headquarters, the 81-year-old company is rejuvenating its dance as well, adding some pure-dance modern works to its traditional repertoire of story ballets and making the old standbys like Sleeping Beauty sexier.

American Ballet Theatre has added three dates in Moscow to its tour itinerary next March. The performances, part of a festival honoring the late Mstislav Rostropovich, are ABT’s first in the Russian capital since 1960.

“The ballet company of the Vienna [State] Opera has fired one of its dancers over a series of risqué pictures that appeared in a magazine, the opera’s director confirmed Thursday. Karina Sarkissova had already received a warning for another series of nude photos.”

“When two men dance, it’s kind of us showing each other what we know. Eventually it turns into this Ouija board, where there’s no leading or following. It’s just being.”