Category: dance

The company is moving into a new home. It’s finances are okay. And a leadership transition is so far going smoothly…

“Over the next few months, some of Britain’s most successful choreographers will be unveiling new work… All four have an interest in crossing styles: from ballet or Indian classical to modern dance. At the same time, they’ve looked for a public beyond the traditional dance audience. And they’re all in demand, worldwide.”

“A former dancer who trained with London’s Royal Ballet was announced yesterday as the new executive director of the Australian Ballet. Californian-born Valerie Wilder, who has been the executive director of the Boston Ballet in the US since 2002, was tempted away from a return to Toronto, where she spent almost 20 years with the National Ballet of Canada, to take up the Australian Ballet job.”

“Pilar López, who has died aged 95, was the last representative of the golden age of flamenco ballet in the 1930s and 1940s. She was considered a fine, serious classical dancer, but it was as a choreographer and teacher of young dancers that she excelled.”

Finding a black ballerina among the personnel at the UK’s major dance companies is a nearly impossible task. Neither will you find many faces of color in the audience, which can’t be unrelated. “Black ballerinas find it difficult to rise to the top, partly because of misconceptions about their body shape.”

Viviana Durante was once the darling of London’s ballet scene, until an ugly backstage row led to her vanishing from the Royal Ballet. “Since leaving the Royal she has danced with American Ballet Theatre, in Dresden, in Italy and – most of the time – in Japan.” Now she’s back on a London stage for the first time in nearly a decade.

“The family of the dancer Tanja Liedtke, who died in a road accident seven months ago, has set up a foundation in her name, with the hope of raising €1million to honour and perpetuate her work… Liedtke, who had an international career as a dancer and choreographer, was artistic director-designate of the Sydney Dance Company when she died aged 29.”

Atlanta is one of the centers of American hip-hop, and Atlanta Ballet is taking advantage, mounting an unprecedented collaboration with one half of the Grammy-winning rap duo, OutKast. “They are seeking to expand the horizons of their respective forms, without compromising them. It’s a tall order, and it comes as ballet companies and the hip-hop industry are casting about (not always gracefully) for new directions and new audiences.”

Modernist choreographer Anthony Tudor, born 100 years ago this week, “yanked the weeds out of what he saw as a decaying art form, pruning away decorative excess and virtuoso tricks that had no dramatic value… Yet his centennial year finds this once-prized innovator half-forgotten.”

Laura Bleiberg, dance critic at the Orange County Register for more than 18 years, is leaving her position for a job in the nonprofit world. Her departure leaves the Los Angeles area without a single full-time dance critic.