Category: dance

“It has been about a dozen years since Ballet Arkansas fielded a professional company. … Now [the company] says it’s back on its feet, creating a new six-member professional company that will form the core of the company’s performing, teaching and community outreach activities.”

Talia Fowler, an 18-year-old ballerina from Brisbane beat three other finalists on the Network Ten program to become Australia’s favourite dancer on Sunday night.

“The waif-like dancer has been off stage for almost a year, while rumours circulated that she had a broken neck. In fact, a whiplash injury suffered in rehearsal had threatened to end the 27-year-old’s dancing career.” This week she’s back onstage in her signature role, Giselle.

“While the organization narrowly escaped bankruptcy in December, it is still struggling to pull together a 2009-10 season amid less-than-stellar ticket sales, disappointing fundraising results, and a global recession. … [T]he company wants to spend the first half of next season creating new work, but doing so raises questions about whether Ballet B.C. can expect continued financial support if it does not perform until 2010.”

“Scottish Ballet is to tour China for the first time in 17 years after receiving funding from the Scottish Government, it was announced yesterday. The entire company, including 40 dancers and 20 backstage staff, will take their productions of Carmen and Pennies From Heaven on the Oriental tour next month after the £100,000 boost.”

This weekend in L.A., “[r]otating with the digital ads for fast food and auto insurance will be an eight-second spot promoting an experimental dance project. The advertisement will feature [still] images from Underwater Ballet, a digital film directed by Liz Goldwyn and starring dancer Deanna Beasom.” And for a week beginning May 1, Clear Channel will run the entire Underwater Ballet twice an hour on a billboard in New York’s Times Square.

“The Orlando Magic have an what may seem like an unlikely partner in Wednesday[‘s] playoff game against the Philadelphia 76ers. The Orlando Ballet will perform at halftime.”

“A Cheshire teenager has become only the third British boy to win a place at the elite Bolshoi Ballet School in the Russian academy’s 233-year history. Daniel Dolan, 16, from Widnes, started his dance career aged four when he swapped his rugby boots for ballet shoes, said his father Peter. … The dancer starts at the academy in August if he can find the £15,000 fees.”

“Ronn Guidi has resigned as artistic director of the Oakland Ballet Company and as teacher and proprietor of the Oakland Ballet Academy, leaving the future of both institutions uncertain. […] This is not the first sudden retirement from Guidi, who founded the Oakland Ballet in 1965 and led it to international repute with revivals of rare Ballets Russes masterpieces in the 1990s. In 1998, backstage during Nutcracker, Guidi scrawled his resignation on a napkin.”

Alastair Macaulay: “George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton seldom used Mozart, with good reason. They recognized that Mozart’s music, even though it abounds in dance rhythms, is often characterized by a structural and expressive subtlety that will make any response in movement look trite. But where angels fear to tread …”