Category: dance

“When Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal performed Thursday evening, artistic director Gradimir Pankov made his first appearance as a bona fide Canuck – in a brief citizenship ceremony onstage at Place Des Arts.”

That would be Kenneth MacMillan’s The Judas Tree. “One woman appears within a group of construction workers … She is a beauty and sexually provocative, driving the men mad with frustration until they gang rape her. … The foreman wants her and he is the only man not to have had her, which enrages him. With a beautiful and brutal twist of her head, he breaks her neck.” See it now at Covent Garden.

“Babies are pre-programmed to dance and to enjoy it, research by the University of York has shown. The study of 120 children aged between five months and two years found that babies spontaneously started moving to music and rhythmic beats. Scientists also found that the better the children were at moving in time with the music, the more they smiled.”

John Neumeier on his ballet version of the Hans Christian Andersen tale: “[The] violence in the story is quite strong. The mermaid allows herself to be literally torn apart to get to her goal. And she meets an ambiguous ending – it certainly isn’t happy. She refuses to kill the prince, and attempts suicide instead.”

“Artistic director Gil Boggs doesn’t try to sugarcoat the Colorado Ballet’s just-announced lineup for its 50th-anniversary season in 2010-11: It’s nothing like what he originally intended.”

“Like Cuba itself, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, which [Alicia] Alonso founded and still rules, is utterly distinctive: it fields world-class dancers at the same time as remaining culturally isolated from the wider ballet world.” (With video.)

Hey, that baby they use to make the stem of the Q: Not an actual company member, we’re guessing.

“A major city like San Francisco or New York is already so well-served for dance,” McIntyre points out. “To me it feels more American to be a pioneer and go to a place that hasn’t built up its dance community to that level, and help be a part of it from the ground up.”

“Hail blocked drain pipes and contaminated water flooded through the 100-year-old wool store where the company stores its costumes and props. Hundreds of tutus got wet, and dirty water has tarnished both backdrops and costumes.”

“The current Taylor season at New York City Center ends on Sunday; it has offered a number of pieces so mysterious that I long for further disclosures. I like best of all getting to know Mr. Taylor’s works by rewatching them in performance, but some are revived so seldom I don’t have the chance.”