Category: dance

“Ballet is inherently high art. Popular music can be high art too, but in a very different way. It’s like trying to crossbreed a hen and a mongoose: it might be fun to try, but it won’t work. Brian Wilson we can forgive, for he knows not what he does. However, Joni Mitchell’s faculties seem to be intact.”

“It may be too soon to define his signature steps or say what is unmistakably the Wheeldon aesthetic–and it is certainly too soon to say whether his company will meet the critic Arlene Croce’s definition of a great dance company: ‘a vision of the universe and the individual’s place in it.’ But to sit in an audience waiting for the curtain to go up on a Wheeldon premiere is to feel that uncommon crackle of anticipation.”

“Ashley Wheater, 48, is poised to give the Joffrey, based in Chicago since 1995, a bit of a kick-start. ‘I want the Joffrey to be the company that it started out being, which was eclectic, with a huge respect for where we’ve come from’.”

“There are reasons why dancers don’t go around grabbing as much attention as other media and theatre people. Beyond the fact that dance still counts as a minority art form, most of its practitioners are so exhausted by the daily routine of class, rehearsal and performance that they don’t have time for extracurricular activities. Most of them also leave the profession so young. Even so, if we were to go looking for an ambassador for British dance, the list is dispiritingly short.”

Herman Cornejo “has been a principal dancer in Ballet Theater since 2003, having joined the corps when he was just 17. But his rapid ascent has staggered just short of the story-ballet summit; he has never played the romantic lead at Ballet Theater, save for the odd opportunity on tour and in gala highlights. For many dancers, that would be enough. For an artist like Mr. Cornejo, it is not.”

Choreographer Frederic Franklin is 93. Not that you’d know it from watching him work. “He’s as spry as he is sharp-witted, threatening to take off in leaps himself while coaching the Joffrey dancers in the studio. Watching Franklin work these days is a little like seeing a venerable conductor in charge of an orchestra or a basketball coach at top speed in the gym.”

“I have a dance colleague who complains that there’s too much about sex in this book, and another who says that there isn’t enough, soon enough. Sex, surely, is central, because the body is central, onstage and off-. It isn’t, after all, Nureyev’s mind that interests us so much, or even, possibly, his mind that interested him so much. For Nureyev was one of those rare equal-opportunity crushes, up close and in the theater, where he was galvanic.”

“Spread over four days, Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Fall for Dance will offer two two-night programs featuring classical, contemporary and ethnic dance from 11 companies based in the U.S. and abroad. And along with the bargain-basement tickets, OCPAC hopes to entice potential new audience members with free pre-show talks, lecture demonstrations and panel discussions with the participating choreographers.”

“Although dance and science might sound at first like an unlikely alliance, a fascination with basic questions about the world around us is common to both disciplines, and many artists find rich metaphoric possibilities in the pages of the science section of the daily newspaper.”

“From adolescence on, Nureyev demonstrated an insatiable hunger for the arts — dance, of course, which he pursued with a future saint’s sense of vocation — but also music, painting, theater, books and architecture. He was equally curious about people from foreign milieus, forging acquaintances the Soviet system would strictly forbid.”