Category: dance

“Now every network is begging for the next dance opportunity. Everywhere you look, it’s thriving and pulling in enormous numbers. Doing a show like ‘Dancing With the Stars’ is pretty much the most famous you can get as a dancer unless you’re Baryshnikov or something.”

In July of 1518, a woman began a fervent dancing vigil that lasted between four and six days. By the end of the week, 34 others had joined her and, “within a month, the crowd of dancing, hopping and leaping individuals had swelled to 400. Authorities prescribed ‘more dancing’ to cure the tormented movers but, by summer’s end, dozens in the Alsatian city had died of heart attacks, strokes and sheer exhaustion due to nonstop dancing.”

Italian choreographer Luca Veggetti has been taking the US by storm recently. “He has long identified with what he calls the distinctly American sense of freedom, and he hopes soon to move here permanently.” Throughout his career, Veggetti has rejected the European cultural model in favor of a hard-won freelance career.

“The United States has numerous summer ballet programs, from small classes in suburban studios to the School of American Ballet’s prestigious program. But the Bolshoi offering, which began with a smaller, trial session last summer in Manhattan and is organized by the Russian American Foundation, is both a camp and a cross-cultural public relations effort.”

During the Cultural Revolution, “costumes were banned; the dancers wore Mao suits. Foreign terms, such as pas de deux, were also outlawed. ‘We had to perform in the countryside on stages of rocks and dirt.’ Once the door to outside influences reopened in the early 1980s, the Chinese National Ballet darted through, inviting in new choreographers and teachers.”

The Victoria government won’t support a planned tour by the Paris Opera Ballet, and the season has collapsed. “We’re embarrassed for Australia, and we’re embarrassed for Melbourne. It’s terrible after having been given such a wonderful time in Sydney for the ballet to be flicked by Melbourne.” Supporters of the planned vist warned that “the decision might do “irreparable damage” to the reputations of Melbourne and Australia.

It was a surprise to all when James Kudelka suddenly quit as director of the National Ballet of Canada in 2005. “When Kudelka looks back to that time, he sees a perfect storm of anti-creativity forces. Central to that storm were his fears that the new house would impact negatively on the company’s budget, siphoning funds away from its creative mandate.”

Alastair Macaulay comes away from this season’s American Ballet Theatre season strangely unsatisfied. “Is this the spring season that America’s national ballet company should have been giving? Why does Ballet Theater seem to take ballet less seriously than I do?”

Valerie Wilder is an unusually qualified chief executive. A former dancer, artistic director and executive director, she knows the performing-arts business — both onstage and off — and the joys and hardships that can come with it.