Category: dance

“At 1:15 p.m., three groups of 100 students sent wishes for a peaceful G-20 Summit through simultaneous, surprise performances — or flash mobs — and then dispersed 3 minutes later.” The dancers wore “matching orange peace sign T-shirts.”

“In the players’ finest moments, elegance often exists alongside the brutality. And no wonder: Few sports have more in common with the formality and artistry of a dance performance. Consider the structure…”

Rankin has 30 years of experience in arts administration and built Toronto Dance Theatre’s capital reserve during his eight years at the company. “The Vancouver dance company has just undergone a painful restructuring and needs to raise money if it is to continue.”

“It has been almost 3½ years since the Kansas City Ballet decided on the Union Station Power House as the site of its new Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity. Now the organization is ready to start transforming the dilapidated historic structure … into an airy work and performance space.”

“Turning 50 this year, the National Ballet of China is showing its range with a slew of imported and original performances such as Swan Lake and Raise the Red Lantern, but what audiences crave are the ballets born during the company’s heady first decade,” such as the still-popular Red Detachment of Women.

“Leading figures from the dance world have raised concerns about the lack of high-profile opportunities open to female choreographers, and are urging venues and promoters to look at the gender balance of their programmes. Their concerns will be aired at a debate, called ‘Where Are All the Women?’, which is being held at the Queen Elizabeth’s Hall on October 21.”

“Look at Swayze in Dirty Dancing, and you can see that attentiveness, that focus: his ‘hungry eyes’ fixed on hers, his concentration on her performance. It’s both powerfully romantic and deeply sexy, and Swayze clinches it not because of his acting but because he learned dance partnering.”

The three-week tour to Beijing and Shanghai is “part of the official celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the United States and China.” Sets and costumes have been shipped; the company leaves Thursday.

In his new film La Danse, the venerable documentary director Frederick Wiseman turns his famously stripped-down style – “no title cards, no voice-over narration, no talking-head interviews, no staged re-creations or archival clips” – to the working’s of the world’s most venerable (okay, oldest) ballet company.

“There is a great affinity between the combination of athleticism, power, dexterity, speed and coordination demanded by tennis, and those very same qualities that can be particularly evident in ballet. And tennis has the same quality of individual endeavor as dance….”