Category: dance

“Adam Linder, 25, won The Place Prize for dance 2008 for his contemporary duet Foie Gras, a critique of modern mass consumption. He was the youngest of 20 choreographers chosen from 174 hopefuls to compete for the £25,000 award.” And just like that, a quiet kid from Australia became one of the hot new personalities of the international dance world.

“What a difference a year makes! When Christopher Wheeldon brought his new company Morphoses to Sadlers Wells last year, I complained that the programme was monochrome and prim – a poor advertisement for so exciting a venture. Wednesday’s bill was exactly the opposite: full of life, intelligence and promise for the future.”

“What might [the first break dancers] make of Break Out, the Korean dance-comedy spectacle now having its North American debut at the Union Square Theater? I’m still trying to figure out what to make of it myself.”

“That [Brigitte] Lefèvre, 63, has lasted 16 years in different capacities, mostly as dance director, is in itself remarkable. Historically dance directors have tended to fall like flies at the Paris Opera.”

The company, which switched to recorded music two years ago to save money, will use a pit orchestra for four productions this season, thanks to a one-time $200,000 grant.

The Trey McIntyre Project, with a budget of $1.6 million, is a compact ensemble of 10 that he envisions expanding to 12 next year. He is happy working on this scale for the moment. “I don’t want to be making any larger pieces. I also want to be sure that every dancer is challenged and working a lot.”

“Depending on whom you talk to, the 48-year-old ballet group is either facing imminent death or simply weathering the kind of economic storm that periodically afflicts many nonprofit arts groups. But a bright side has emerged as TBT goes about righting the ship. The groundswell of support that rose up when the company’s troubles came to light may have surprised even the ballet organizers, and it has brought in well over $1 million thus far.”

“On leaving the company, many of those homegrown dancers set up as teachers, feeding a new generation through the schools. That thread – that continuity – is now broken, and the results for British ballet have been catastrophic. A sideways glance at football tells the same story: a national skill-base weakened, possibly beyond repair, by a vast influx of foreign players.It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Snow White is supposed to be a story of innocence lost and love found, but Catherine Baÿ has a different take. “The site-specific installation, seen Tuesday at the Diane von Furstenberg shop in the West Village, transports the character from the land of fairy tales to the fashionable meatpacking district,” and recreates Snow White as “slightly creepy and undeniably militant.”

“The Bessies — more formally known as the New York Dance and Performance Awards — are often described as the dance world’s equivalent of the Oscars.” The 24th annual presentation of the Bessies took place on Monday night, with plenty of emotion and few surprises.