Category: dance

“The Washington Ballet was reeling yesterday from the death of one of its Studio Company members,” Mary Saludares, 20, “who was hit by a car on Friday after a performance at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Md. … Less than two weeks ago, local audiences had seen Saludares dance in the corps of the Washington Ballet’s performances of ‘La Sylphide’ at the Kennedy Center.”

“The Washington Ballet Company is canceling the rest of its Studio Company tour after a 20-year-old dancer was fatally injured when she was struck by a car Friday while on tour in Harford County.”

“The Pet Shop Boys are working on a ballet featuring ‘electronics and strings’ to be staged at Sadler’s Wells, Neil Tennant has revealed. The singer told Radio 2 presenter Stuart Maconie that the piece, based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, could open at the London theatre in 2011. He and keyboardist Chris Lowe were composing an original score, he said.”

Jim Vincent is resigning as artistic director of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in late August to take the same post at the Nederlands Dans Theater in the Hague.

“After bolting from the National Ballet in 2005 (unhappy at the ramifications that came with the new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts) and pulling up the drawbridge (this past summer he opened a bakery in Vittoria, Ont., population 600), Kudelka re-emerged to find himself not exactly at the top of the call list any more. ‘I woke up a year ago and thought, ‘Okay, I’ve got to start thinking about work’.”

“Ticket sales and donations are both down about 6 percent to 8 percent, company officials said, causing a major shortfall in revenue. The company expects to record a $5.5 million deficit this season, even with extra cost-cutting measures.”

“What’s the mood like in Ballet B.C. rehearsals for its first new work since the trauma of shutdowns and near collapse?” A visit to rehearsals of James Kudelka’s new piece, The Goldberg Variations Side 2: Adam & Eve & Steve, indicates that the dancers are reinvigorated and working harder than ever.”

Feeling like she didn’t quite fit in at the august New York City Ballet (“I felt like if I didn’t do something exactly the same way they wanted me to, it made me look bad, or like a rebel”), Melissa Barak fled in 2007 for Los Angeles Ballet. But NYCB ballet master Peter Martins “doesn’t hold a grudge. Last year, he sent her a letter asking her to return, this time as choreographer of a major work for her alma mater.”

Andrew Wilhelm-Boyles, former executive director of the Greater Vancouver Alliance for Arts and Culture and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, will help steer the company through its post-bankruptcy restructuring.

Two weeks after canceling the remainder of its 2008-09 season, Madison Ballet has decided to save $100,000 by doing without live accompaniment by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra for next season’s Nutcracker and Cinderella. Artistic director W. Earle Smith said, “I feel very confident this is a one-year thing.”