Category: dance

The arrival of “Billy Elliot” on Broadway, coinciding with the reminder that the next White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was trained as a ballet dancer, has become part of the latest wave of “real men can do ballet” talk.

“A controversial ballet is to chart the rise and fall of African dictator Robert Mugabe through cutting-edge dance on the British stage. My Friend Robert, by award-winning choreographer Bawren Tavaziva, draws upon his personal experiences and memories of growing up in the then newly independent Zimbabwe.”

“Rafael Bonachela, the new artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company, has taken a knife to the company, shedding seven dancers [out of 17] and seeking to put two more on contracts lasting less than a year. The SDC also sacked four administrative staff and wants to move four full-time members of its production team onto casual contracts in response to the economic downturn… The changes cap off a horrendous period in the company’s history. In the past two years, the SDC has endured financial troubles, plummeting morale and the tragic death of Tanja Liedtke, its artistic director-designate.”

After years of rehearsing in a rundown old army drill hall, Scottish Ballet is getting ready to move into a purpose-built £11m headquarters in Glasgow. “[E]veryone I ask about the move says what they’re looking forward to most is not the huge, hi-tech studios, the education suite, or health and fitness centre, but being in a building that doesn’t leak.”

Brooklyn-based choreographer Chris Elam and his company, Misnomer, are working to use the Web for dance the way music, film and video have. “Borrowing a page from indie-rock bands that have little means for marketing or distribution, he envisions Web sites with streaming video of rehearsals and viewer comments; live video chats with dancers and audiences; and user profiles that are maintained in a database.”

“The Canadian ballet world sympathizes with Vancouver’s pain, but it can’t actually empathize: Ballet administrators across the country report only slight softening in tickets sales and none of the disastrous shortfalls experienced by Ballet British Columbia, which laid off all its staff this week.”

“Due to open in 2010, the facility [on England’s southern coast] will feature performance spaces for both professional and public use, plus a 190-capacity studio theatre. It is being built as part of arts venue the Bournemouth International Centre and Pavilion, which is currently undergoing a separate £13 million refurbishment scheme, funded by the Trevor Osborne Property Group, to improve its 1,430-seat auditorium and ballroom.”

The Vancouver City Council has approved a one-time grant of C$85,000 to keep Ballet BC afloat, but will it be enough? The grant will allow a visiting company to perform The Nutcracker as scheduled, and the hope is that revenues from that production will allow Ballet BC to hire back some of its staff and resume business.

“So You Think You Can Dance Canada has to be rated one of the most successful shows ever produced in this country. … Dancers and choreographers struggling to bring audiences into theatres must be a little peeved, or at least a touch envious. But they shouldn’t fume because watching this show, even witnessing a taping of it, has little to compare with the experience of attending a live dance performance.”

The company, which lost its lease in a building in Soho, said it had found new quarters in a Grand Street auditorium that belongs to the East River Houses, a cooperative complex. It said it would move in next year after renovations that would create two studios with 20-foot ceilings.