Category: dance

“Dancing is believed to be important in the courtship of a variety of species, including humans.” Studies indicate that women are especially attracted to men who have bodily symmetry and who move in a coordinated, balanced way.”

“Why break up so solidly established an ensemble? Because modern-dance troupes, which are almost always dominated by a single choreographer, have a notoriously poor track record of institutional survival after their charismatic founders pass away. Mr. Cunningham, by contrast, is more interested in preserving his fragile choreographic legacy than in keeping his company afloat.”

Anyone who knows anything at all about ballet knows that it’s unbelievably hard work. “We’re very strong-minded people. We learn to control the struggle. You wake up every single day to hammer your body, and you do it, and it does something to you.”

“No one has yet to recapture the impossible suaveness and otherworldly nimbleness of Jackson as a dancer — the Moonwalk completely rewrote the book on male sexuality in music, a move that evoked both deep-space androids and the rakish seducers of the old myths.”

“While visitors to the NYPL [exhibit] will not see Nijinsky dance, they can see the famous diary he kept as he was going mad. Brilliant set and costume designs by Leon Bakst and Natalia Goncharova, plus photographs, musical manuscripts and old BBC films, place the Ballets Russes’ achievement in context, supplying a perspective that the theatergoers who flocked to its productions never had.”

“It takes a lot to make English National Ballet principal dancer Elena Glurdjidze look awkward, but designer Karl Lagerfeld managed it last week. … Despite superficial points in common, the fashion designer is not the ballerina’s natural ally.”

A Q-&-A with the 46-year-old ABT star, who gives her final performance with the company this weekend as Odette/Odile. She’s heading home to Tbilisi to concentrate on directing the State Ballet of Georgia – and to be with her two children and her husband, Georgia’s foreign minister.

“The news in L.A.’s dance world this week has been the West Coast premiere of works by choreographer Yvonne Rainer. But today’s bigger news is that when Rainer’s ‘RoS Indexical’ and ‘Spiraling Down’ are performed at REDCAT on Thursday through Sunday, the esteemed 74-year-old will be on stage as well.”

Gold medals were given in men’s and women’s solo (to Vladimir Shklyarov and Maria Semeniachenko) and duet categories as well as for choreography (to Yury Smelakov). Yet “no single dancer was deemed impressive enough to win the Marina Semyonova grand prix – the competition is dedicated to the legendary Russian dancer – and the $10,000 cash prize that goes along with it.”

“Two lighting technicians with Russia’s world-famous Bolshoi Ballet [are] beginning 40-month jail terms in Hong Kong Tuesday for beating up and robbing a prostitute.”