Category: dance

“Money’s tight, crowds are small and everything has to get past the censor. Yet modern dance is catching on in China… Modern dance was banned in China until 1980, and it has only grown through the efforts of a few exceptional individuals, and the importing of western ideas.”

The lawsuit had been filed by a 74-year-old trumpet player who believed he was dismissed from the American Ballet Theater Orchestra because of his age. ABT will pay him more than $18,000 in back pay, while making no admission of wrongdoing.

In a sign of unhappiness about his performance, the Kirov Ballet is traveling for an important appearance in New York without its director, Makhar Vaziev.

“The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has not only persevered for five decades, it has thrived, becoming an internationally known, blue-chip arts institution that manages to attract dance devotees and people with only a passing interest in the field alike. Since its debut in 1958, it has grown from eight to 35 dancers and performed for an estimated 21 million people in 48 states and 71 countries on six continents — accomplishments that few if any other modern- dance troupes can claim.”

On a couple of levels, Vitoria Marks believes, dance is the ultimate in spin. That phoniness led to her rescue mission for the art form. “I wanted to rescue it from my own contempt,” she says.

“After more than 30 years performing at the city’s biggest and most opulent theater, on Tremont Street, Boston Ballet has signed a long-term deal to move its season into the recently restored Opera House, beginning in 2009. The move ends a sometimes contentious relationship between the ballet and the Citi Performing Arts Center, which oversees the 3,600-seat Wang Theatre, where the ballet has appeared for decades.”

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is turning 50 this year, and the company’s namesake will be getting his name on a Manhattan street as part of the celebration. In all, the company will spend 18 months commemorating the anniversary, with “performances, a video installation and even the release of a Barbie doll.”

New York City Ballet trains its own dancers. “The Royal Ballet, on the other hand, is the Chelsea FC of companies, buying dancers all over the world and slotting them into position as required. This means a glorious rollcall of stars, but a company which is calculatedly – and many would say catastrophically – disconnecting itself from the local talent-base.”

Alastair Macaulay: “My immediate reaction to these photographs was to admire them as art; as design, shape, color, they’re remarkable. My initial reaction to them as a dancegoer, however, was to think that the blurring was less appropriate to Mr. Cunningham’s work than it would be to that of many other choreographers.”

“Some Tibetan demonstrators have called for a boycott of the Olympics following China’s recent crackdown on protests in the region. Dancers from Covent Garden are due to travel to Beijing in June, where they will perform Sleeping Beauty at the opening ceremony of the Cultural Olympiad. They will also perform Manon in Beijing and Shanghai before touring Japan.