Category: dance

“When [Gelsey Kirkland] finally left the company it was a great relief for me. No one else came close to giving me so much grief,” May Ishimoto wrote in a memoir. And that time Nureyev threw his costume out the window and into the Chicago River? It was just the boots …

“He was by nature a storyteller (even his most abstract ballets have suggestions of plot and character); but don’t look for the familiar balletic pleasure of yearning hearts and idealised loves. Instead, you’ll find corrupted innocents, social hypocrites, murderers and whores aplenty – as well as incest and rape.”

“The Colorado Ballet is in financial trouble. Again. In what has become a recurring story line for the Denver-based, 30-member company, it is facing potentially crippling budget shortfalls. … Word [had even] circulated in the arts community in December that the ballet was on the verge of closing its doors at the end of the month.”

The company recently announced that its spring 2010 season would include a “world premiere” with choreography by Peter Martins and a score by Esa-Pekka Salonen. As it turns out, said score is Salonen’s Violin Concerto, co-commissioned by NYCB but premiered last April by the L.A. Philharmonic at Disney Hall.

“In 1985, the San Francisco Ballet took a huge risk in appointing Helgi Tomasson as its artistic director.” He had had a very distinguished career as a dancer, but had very little experience either choreographing or running a company. “Still, as Tomasson will remind you occasionally, he descends from tough Viking stock.”

The documentary TuTuMUCH “is a real and often shocking look into the life of a ballerina trying to make it into the professional world. It’s full of excitement and disappointment, tears and laughter and hard decisions regarding years of sacrifice and pain and the limitations of one’s anatomy. And it’s all from the mouths of children.”

“[The] American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents ballet dancers, [has] accused one of [Come Fly Away]’s lead producers of unfair labor practices, after Actors’ Equity Association agreed to represent the performers in the show.”

Founded by choreographer and former Pacific Northwest Ballet principal Olivier Wevers, “Whim W’Him is a family-and-friends affair. Its lineup includes Wevers’ husband, Lucien Postlewaite, and his best friend/former wife, [Kaori] Nakamura, along with friends made over the years at PNB and through his recent work with Spectrum [Dance Theater].”

“The Three Man Project: Full Bloom … is inspired by the famous Bette Davis quote: ‘Getting old is not for sissies.’ “Co-creator Kevin O’Day says: ‘We chose the title Full Bloom to be sarcastic. The performance career for most men in dance is over by their forties, yet here we are, three old guys putting ourselves on stage for an hour and 10 minutes.”