Category: dance

“As the Texas Ballet Theater makes its much anticipated 2008-09 season debut at Bass Performance Hall tonight, the financially troubled company will take Fort Worth’s most famous stage still seeking an estimated $600,000 in donations to help it reach its goal of $2 million, the amount it says it needs to bring financial stability for the rest of the year.”

“Two years ago, the former Los Angeles Times dance critic Lewis Segal wrote an article called ‘Five Things I Hate About Ballet’… Tuesday night, watching the Kirov Ballet at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, I thought I knew just how he felt.”

Over the past 16 years, in the gritty suburbs of Paris, a group of young dancers who call themselves traceurs have been interacting with the urban environment through movement – “they can be seen pulling off anything from gutsy leaps from roof tops to sublime balancing acts on metal railings.”

“Nadia Nerina, an enchanting and virtuosic ballet dancer who inspired choreographer Frederick Ashton’s enduring comedy La Fille mal gardée and outperformed Rudolf Nureyev, died Oct. 6… [she] was one of the major classical ballet dancers of the 1950s and ’60s and a reigning presence in the Sadler’s Wells company, which became the Royal Ballet.”

“After joining James Sewell Ballet as executive director just nine months ago, Tony Caparelli has left the Minneapolis-based dance company. His last day was Oct. 3.” The search for a successor is already in progress.

“Many a New York artist has claimed to be the hardest-working person in showbiz, but David Steele, 30, should make any short list. His many hats include entrepreneur, comedian and manager. But at heart he is a dancer, one who performs at least 30 times in a midday shift, sometimes twice that if he does a night shift. His stage? The steel cars of the New York City subway.”

Texas Ballet Theatre is trying hard to dig its way out of a financial mess. So how does this company’s situation compare to other American companies?

“Tina Ramirez, the artistic director of Ballet Hispanico, is stepping down from her position after almost 40 years, but she doesn’t want to call it retirement: ‘I’ve been in the theater my whole life, how can you retire?'” Nonetheless, this is the beginning of her last season at the company’s helm.

Despite 15 years’ struggle with conservative clerics, nervous officials, small audiences (who sometimes boo) and an uncomprehending society, the Egyptian Modern Dance Theater Company and its school have firmly established themselves in Cairo’s arts scene.

“Among the surviving 19th century ballets, Don Quixote… doesn’t get much respect. It wears its lowbrow intentions a mite too proudly… But let’s face it: Don Q is about keeping the audience entertained, and high art is often perceived as tainted when it entertains. The Kirov Ballet, not surprisingly, approaches it with no such hang-ups.”