Category: dance

“Borrowing a page from indie-rock bands that have little means for marketing or distribution, Chris Elam 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 aim is to nurture a following that can view the course of creating a show, virtually, and even help direct it as well as comment on it afterward.”

“The Baryshnikov Arts Center has (finally!) officially purchased the 299-seat Jerome Robbins Theater adjacent to the three floors that it owns in the 37 Arts building. The closing was yesterday – thanks in part to $2.5 mil from the Jerome Robbins Foundation, matched by Baryshnikov, the BAC paid in cash!” The Wooster Group will be a resident company in the multidisciplinary space.

Writer, administrator and former modern dancer John R. Killacky talks about how the skills dancing gave him helped with problem-solving, teamwork, spatial design, risk-taking and even recovery from spinal injury.

The Beijing Contemporary Dance Theater, China’s first modern dance troupe, gives its inaugural performances next month. The company’s founder and director, 35-year-old choreographer Wang Yuanyuan, is a frequent collaborator of star filmmaker Zhang Yimou.

“In an abrupt upheaval at the Orlando Ballet, artistic director Bruce Marks quit Saturday night and was replaced Monday morning by Robert Hill, a former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre.”

“Hernando Cortez, the former member of noted New York dance companies who raised Cleveland’s Verb Ballets to national status, is stepping down immediately as Verb’s artistic director.” The company’s board president says Cortez is leaving “to follow other artistic interests,” but an internal e-mail suggests otherwise.

“With the flurry of attention for the ballet history of congressman Rahm Emanuel (President-elect Obama’s pick for White House chief of staff), it’s suddenly become a lot cooler to be a guy who knows his way around toeshoes, turnouts and tights.” But it’s not just because of Emanuel. “‘Billy Elliot the Musical,’ which opened this week to enthusiastic reviews, has thrust boys and ballet into the bright Broadway spotlight.”

25 years after his death, George Balanchine remains a giant of the dance world. But the company that made him famous, New York City Ballet, “has become less incisive, more lightweight, less disturbing” in presenting his work, says Alistair Macaulay.

Oregon Ballet Theatre is dumping its live orchestra for all but a few performances of The Nutcracker to save money. In addition, “nine senior staffers took a 5 percent pay cut, and salaries were frozen across the rest of the staff. The company also made production cuts for a total savings of a little more than $300,000, or about 5 percent of its $6.7 million budget.”

Canada’s National Ballet is giving the North American premiere of a newly choreographed version of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. “Chekhov’s original play is about actors and playwrights. In [John Neumeier’s] ballet, they have become dancers and choreographers.”