Category: dance

“[Choreographer Melissa] Barak admitted the subject [of a notorious Vegas mobster] is unusual for a ballet. Even more exceptional is that she has chosen to make a story ballet with dialogue. Nine of the 30 dancers will speak.”

“Actually, the term is often applied to mean West African dance alone. That geographical area has a particular resonance: many slaves in America were taken from West Africa. Yet who thinks that everyone across West Africa dances alike? And what about the rest of Africa?”

“It wasn’t always this easy to find God at the ballet. Back in 1986, when Kathy Thibodeaux started Ballet Magnificat, the nation’s first Christian ballet company, people told her it was a big mistake. Two professional touring companies, a school and a growing international reputation later, the naysayers are forgiven.”

“His subsequent turn to many modes of contemporary dance has been criticized as an opportunistic move that had the unfortunate side effect of making these idioms seem like a refuge for diminished athletic capacity. But Baryshnikov says that he has come to feel that ballet ‘is kind of a dead art, a bit, in my view,’ and actually his interest in modern dance long predates the end of his ballet career.”

“A pop-up ballroom hits the road today as part of a venture designed to get thousands more people dancing in time for the Olympics. The Big Dance Bus, with its unfolding dance floor, will make scheduled stops around the city to encourage members of the public to try out dance from ballet to tango as part of the biggest celebration of dance in the world.”

“[Dancers] Emma Fitzgerald and Áine Stapleton – or Fitzgerald & Stapleton, as they are known in their Dublin base – are devoted to uncovering the secrets that relate to the female form, making works in which clothing is generally deemed unnecessary.”

“The New York City Ballet is convening what could certainly be called an all-star panel: On Monday, principal dancers Yvonne Borree, Albert Evans, Darci Kistler and Philip Neal will take the stage – not to dance, but to talk about their long NYCB careers, which are coming to a close this season.”

“Part of this year’s Next Wave Festival, [Private Dances is] a show that eschews risqué, scantily clad high-kicks in favour of a different kind of intimacy. Its promise is to offer its audience the chance to see Melbourne’s ‘next wave’ of young dancers in a unique scenario: three minutes, one-on-one, inside a tent.”

Meet the Dazzle Dancers, “a 16-member group that, performing in shredded Lycra onesies and enough glitter to spackle Mount Rushmore, spreads a gospel of gleeful amateurism and compulsive nudity wherever they appear.” Among the principles that govern their art: “Rehearsal is fear-based.”

“Street dance – the umbrella term for dance that originated in groups outside dance studio – has been going on in pockets around Britain since the late 1970s but, thanks to three years’ worth of street-dancing winners on Britain’s Got Talent,” the style is now popular enough to pull crowds to television and cinemas.