Category: dance

The company’s brand strategist explains: “I think the ballet really needed to put a stake in the ground and say, ‘This is happening here, you need to take note.’ Because no one else would do that for them. One of our big challenges was to shift the perception of what ballet is all about.”

“Perhaps the most salient characteristic of [Deborah] Colker’s work since she founded the company that bears her name 15 years ago has been her desire to toy with perceptions of dimension, direction and distance. An early piece, Rota, featured dancers performing in a large spinning wheel, like hamsters at play.”

“That he continues choreographing is something of a minor miracle. Not only is the arts economy dire, but Perez also has been visually impaired for the last decade. Moving slowly and burdened with hazy vision at best, Perez says the work keeps him going.”

“[The company’s] directors no longer worry about bringing in space heaters to keep the dancers warm, or hiring buses to ferry them to faraway locations when inner-city rehearsal venues are booked. DanceHouse’s resources – from TVs for reviewing choreography to spaces for sewing costumes – also allow Ballet Ireland to attract choreographers of international calibre.”

Miami City Ballet opens its season this week “without any of the new works or big classical productions that have generated excitement in recent years. MCB’s budget is $11.2 million, down from $13.8 million last year. Eight dancers did not have their contracts renewed….”

“The prognosis for the Oakland Ballet Company looked grim in April when founding Artistic Director Ronn Guidi suddenly resigned (for the second time in a decade).” But this weekend, “the company gave its first concert since Guidi’s retirement. The short, mixed program left ballet fans, if not connoisseurs of choreography, in a hopeful mood.”

To survive in a tight economy, Pennsylvania Ballet “has chosen pay freezes and furloughs. The non-artistic staff has shrunk by five from its 22 positions through attrition, and those jobs are going unfilled.” But tomorrow night the ballet opens its season “with its full roster of about 40 dancers, and its orchestra.”

“Dance itself. The one reason people don’t take dance seriously is because a lot of choreographers don’t take dance seriously. Audiences don’t want to see the kind of self-indulgent, boring dance that is so prevalent today.”

That’s the question asked by filmmaker Elliot Caplan. His answer, 15 Days of Dance: The Making of ‘Ghost Light’, “documents a three-week rehearsal process, followed by a one-week residency in Buffalo in early 2007. … The film, a rigorous and highly entertaining depiction of that murky thing, the choreographic process, is 18 hours long.”

“Plagued by internal strife and struggling to remain financially solvent, the company’s four artistic directors essentially decided [in 2004 that] they needed a boss” and hired an executive director. Five years (and the departure of one artistic director) later, “Pilobolus seems not only alive and well but galvanized by its efforts to reinvent itself.”