Category: dance

“According to Ballet spokesperson Missie Santomo, the Immigration Service is delaying visa renewal and has asked for specific evidence that [Liang] Fu has achieved ‘distinction’ through a high level of achievement in his field, substantially above that ordinarily encountered, and an explanation of why an American dancer could not bring the same ability to the stage as Fu.”

“Once the mainstay of Britain’s premier modern dance company, his works are now rarely seen. His model was Martha Graham, and both his choreography and his teaching were founded on her dance technique: weighted, expressive, driven by the spine and pelvis. But they are less expressionistic, and often based around a social situation rather than a psychodrama….”

“My work is not finished until there is an audience watching. I absolutely insist on that. It is a ceremony, and the ceremony is made for the audience. It’s made up of the energy that is bouncing back and forth between the stage and the audience. It is a primitive thing that has been going on ever since theatre was first invented.

“Helgi Tomasson’s 25th anniversary season as artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet reveled in diverse choreography and alert, expressive, occasionally transcendent dancing, but it also chipped away at a couple of lingering fantasies about Tomasson’s artistic policy.”

On his new dance, Babel (words): “It was the first time in the Bible that everybody did something wrong, it wasn’t just Eve or only Judas; it was actually all of us … And God decided to punish us by separating languages so that we couldn’t understand each other. Well, I have an issue with that. … And I feel that in a sense there is a language that we still do have in common, all of us, and I would say that is rhythm.”

“Someone who thinks dancers matter more than choreography. While New York City Ballet does not reveal casts until a week or two before the performance … [American] Ballet Theater issues its first announcement of who will dance what back in October. The groupies have had months to plan their lives accordingly.”

“Ballet dancer Chi Cao can leap through the air with an athleticism that defies gravity, but he says those spectacular jumps are easy, compared to the challenge of trying to cry on cue. Chi … is making his acting debut in Mao’s Last Dancer, a film based on the true story of his countryman, Li Cunxin.”

“The rollcall of dancers, choreographers and performers who have trained, rehearsed, performed or simply fallen in love with dance at the Place is as eclectic as it is long: there’s [Matthew] Bourne, Richard Alston and Siobhan Davies, not to mention Madonna, Kate Bush and Helena Bonham Carter.”

“The SA Ballet Theatre has received sufficient funding to carry on without further staff retrenchments, the company said. It said it had received several large sponsorships since the beginning of the year.”

Many audience members are unaware “that the troupe’s traditionally inspired Chinese dance – reflecting the costumes and ideals of bygone Buddhist and Taoist periods – belies a heated, very contemporary war of words between Falun Gong advocates and the Chinese government.”