Category: dance

“The BBC has pulled scenes from a forthcoming broadcast of a recent Sadler’s Wells show called In the Spirit of Diaghilev, after it emerged they would be unsuitable for a pre-watershed audience.”

“Gregg Mozgala, a 31-year-old actor with cerebral palsy, had 12 years of physical therapy while he was growing up. But in the last eight months, a determined choreographer [Tamar Rogoff] with an unconventional résumé has done what all those therapists could not: She has dramatically changed the way Mr. Mozgala walks.”

“The Atlanta Ballet is set to announce its new executive director: Arthur Jacobus, former boss of Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet.”

“‘Dancing With the Stars’ producers advise contestants to get sprayed down the Sunday before each televised competition.” At a recent spray-on session, a makeup artist “changed the settings on her gun to paint in the shadows of muscles. Six-pack abs, defined cheekbones and sculpted arms appeared almost instantly.”

“Goofy, gentle, nimbly amateurish, jerking was little known outside certain precincts of this sprawling city [L.A.] until a year ago. But in the last nine months or so, jerking began an unexpected run as an Internet phenomenon.” The movement has a “rebellious disregard for the conventions of urban style and music (old school hip-hop artists are referred to as ‘baggy daddies’).”

“The subtext of the week’s performances [at the Blue Note] – with McCoy Tyner, Roy Haynes, Eddie Palmieri and Jack DeJohnette as guests on various nights – is that Mr. Glover is a musician. The raised wooden board beneath him isn’t just his stage; it’s his instrument, with eight microphones underneath.”

18-year-old participant Lauren Lovette: “[Peter Martins] was looking at me as I was sitting there, and I was like: Are you expecting me to say something? Are you reading my mind right now? Stop staring at me. O.K., fine! I really wanted six [dancers to work with]. I’m so happy he gave that to me.”

Daniel Day-Lewis told Oprah “that he managed to avoid dancing in a movie directed by Rob Marshall, who happens to be an accomplished Broadway choreographer. That’s kind of like signing up for swimming lessons and then not getting in the water.”

In its 120 years, the Moulin Rouge has evolved from “essentially a dancing brothel” to a music hall to Gallic neo-vaudeville for tourists. But the hall’s constant is “the cancan, a strenuous chorus-line number in 2/4 time that demands balance, rhythm and stamina. It is popular entertainment incarnate, which is what drew Royal Winnipeg Ballet artistic director Andre Lewis to the Moulin Rouge as the theme for a new full-length story ballet.”

“It’s not often that you see a manifestation of Satan within the precincts of Westminster Abbey, but at a ceremony to unveil a memorial to the founders of the Royal Ballet, he made a striking appearance. [Two dancers] took the part of the fallen angel in synchronised performances of an extract from Ninette de Valois’s Job, performed at either end of the long nave, so that the entire congregation could see something.”