Category: dance

“The Hard Nut” won with 42 percent of the vote. “Nutcracker: The Motion Picture,” based on the Pacific Northwest Ballet production, came in second, with 27 percent. Maurice Béjart’s version claimed 16 percent, and the Bolshoi Ballet garnered 11 percent, while Matthew Bourne’s “Nutcracker!” and George Balanchine’s classic, now having its annual run at New York City Ballet, each picked up a measly 2 percent.

“Ballet British Columbia has sold enough tickets to The Nutcracker to keep its head above water – but now it says it needs $200,000[Can] more to survive into the new year.”

“For two humiliating years, the Atlanta Ballet couldn’t afford an orchestra, and the dance company suffered public scorn, a freeze in artistic quality and a slight erosion in ticket sales. When two donors gave a $250,000 gift in September and brought musicians back to the pit, the arts community cheered. But it had zero effect on tickets.”

“Dance in 2008 demonstrated how insular the art form is becoming. With touring money drying up, most choreographers, particularly the independent ones, are confined to performing in their home cities.”

“New York is where most of the world’s best choreography is still created but too seldom where it is seen.”

Robert Hill, the 47-year-old former star of NY City Ballet and ABT, has just taken the reins of the Florida company, and he wants it to develop a recognizable face for the company. “We’ll do the classics, [but] we’re also going to develop a repertory that says ‘This is Orlando Ballet.'”

A photographic history of Diversions, the flagship contemporary dance company of Wales for the past quarter-century.

“If The Nutcracker is in trouble, then things are really looking bad. At least two of the nation’s ballet companies have reported poor sales for that Christmastime staple, a major source of income in the dance world, and are cutting back. The problems are a reflection of the difficulties the recession is causing for performing arts institutions.”

An annual trip to see The Nutcracker reminds an author of her own dreams of dancing on the big stage at Lincoln Center someday, and the way those dreams were inevitably dashed. “My feet were flat, my head was too big, I had no neck and my legs were disproportionately short. Those Russian ladies really know their stuff. They can spot a duck who will always be a duck.”

“Although Scotiabank says it was within its rights to freeze a Ballet British Columbia bank account and use its funds to pay off a credit-card debt, an expert in insolvency law suggests such actions could be in violation of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.”