Category: dance

“Raymond Dwight Cook, [a surgeon and medical school professor] of Raleigh, has been charged with death by motor vehicle, driving under the influence, failure to reduce speed and careless and reckless driving, after he crashed into the car of Elena Shapiro of the Carolina Ballet.”

Those three elements “might not at first glance seem to belong together in one artistic venture.” But there they are, combined in a dance with the unlikely title of El Paso Requiem, choreographed by Bolshoi alumnus Sergei Vanaev at, improbably enough, “the ambitious little Mystic Ballet” in a little town way out on the Connecticut coast.

“Musicals aren’t just about stories and songs, they’re also about dance and movement – that’s what gets under the skin of audiences, who carry on moving afterwards to keep the feeling alive. But just how good is that dancing – and choreography – in the big West End shows?”

The five troupes, which include English National Ballet and Sadler’s Wells, will each oversee activities in one geographic area of greater London. “The five dance hubs will present site-specific events in shops, parks, museums and galleries, with an overall aim of encouraging people to get involved in dance and generating a legacy for the art form after the [2012] Olympic Games.”

A group of New York City Ballet dancers is shooting a video version of Robbins’s gritty 1958 “ballet in sneakers,” presenting the work’s episodes in locations (an empty gym, a Brooklyn swimming pool) suggested by Ben Shahn’s backdrops for the original staging.

Royal Ballet principal ballerina Tamara Rojo: “There weren’t many programmes about ballet in Spain at the time, and the ones there were showed ballet as very serious and professional. Suddenly, Fame came out and it was about dance for young people….”

This is the centenary of the “season in which the Russian arts connoisseur and promoter brought his country’s ballet out of the hallowed halls of its imperial theaters and onto the stages of Western Europe and beyond. One might reasonably characterize Diaghilev’s now-landmark venture as triggering the applause heard ’round the world for the art of ballet.”

As a kid, Manchester United player Rio Ferdinand kept his ballet lessons hush-hush. “‘I didn’t tell anyone for years, until I was about 15 or 16 and could handle myself properly,’ revealed Ferdinand….”

“Founded in February 1989, the then San Francisco Dance Center – which moved into the upper floors of the Odd Fellows Grand Lodge in 2002 – quickly became one of the busiest locations for dancers and choreographers on the West Coast.”

A PBS series recruits veterans from major dance organizations, like American Ballet Theater and the Ailey School, “to make the mice do their jetés, pliés and other moves as accurately as possible.”