Category: dance

Composer Pete Wyer’s The Far Shore “was created for the Shanghai Expo and was to be premiered next week as the highlight of the event’s ‘UK National Day’. But the British Council and English National Ballet cancelled the performance after learning of the [work’s] dedication [to the people of Tibet], saying … the piece had become ‘a political vehicle’.”

“Combining art, music and a lot of jangly-belled leaping, the event aims to prove that morris dancing is not only alive and kicking but is a potent tradition that should be celebrated, not sniggered at.”

“I spent all my early years feeling – rightly – that I didn’t know enough and that I didn’t have enough experience. I realize now that the sense of not knowing enough is a good way to feel. ” A lengthy Q&A with the chief dance critic of The New York Times.

“Modeled after Miami’s New World Symphony,” the troupe, named Next Generation Ballet, will have “a three-tier demographic: Guest artists that will include principal dancers from companies around the world; apprentice dancers who have completed the bulk of their training but are looking for additional mentoring and stage experience; and … advanced students.”

“In the midst of a comprehensive restructuring that could determine the company’s very survival, the Colorado Ballet’s board of trustees wanted a new executive director with proven success at fund-raising and financial turnarounds. To that end, it tapped Marie Belew Wheatley, who brings 22 years of nonprofit experience in Denver” – at the American Humane Ass’n and the American Red Cross.

Come September, the Leeds-based company, which has been operating out of a suburban secondary school, will be moving into a £12million facility in the center of Leeds’s cultural district. The new dance centre has seven studios, offices and a 200-seat theatre.

“While the performances at this festival are of the essence (and they were uniformly impressive Saturday), it is the audience that is the real story. As viewers arrived in strollers and on walkers, comprising an ideal cross-section of every age and ethnic variety (with many veterans of the three previous festivals back to see more), the whole event could not help but send a dance enthusiast’s heart spinning.”

Judith Mackrell: “It is only 10 years since Debra Craine and I wrote the [Dictionary]. Yet, in terms of the technology used to research it, it could almost have been a century ago.”

From The Red Shoes and La Mort du Cygne, through The Turning Point and White Nights to the nw Black Swan, the backstage stories we see onscreen are all suffering, struggle and competitive rancor.

“What appeared at the time to be an act of savvy foresight has, however, proven surprisingly problematic due to the piecemeal nature of choreographic notation, and the difficulty of transmitting movements that were deeply idiosyncratic and often based on chance. “