Category: dance

Greco, 56, has worked as a marketing and branding consultant for corporations and arts institutions, and is a journalist. He is editor at large of Trace, an arts and culture magazine, and has written for The New Yorker, The Advocate and Dance Magazine, among others.

“It is not just new work that we need; it is work that has genius and resonance. It is up to the people who are in the positions of power to discover the new talents and bring them into a bigger scale and take risks. We need to be more daring, and OK, maybe we fail. Maybe it won’t sell. But does everything we have to put on necessarily have to sell?”

American Ballet Theatre’s Alessandra Ferri retires after 22 years. New York City Ballet’s Kyra Nichols hangs up her shoes after 33 years. “It was a weekend ballet fans — some maybe a little hoarse from cheering — will likely remember for a long time.”

“Whatever repercussions the rise of online video has for music and the music business, it’s doing wonders for dancers. One can’t help but suspect that we are entering a new dance craze golden age, in which the emphasis will be laid firmly on the dancing in dance music. Regional steps and styles, zapped across the world via the internet, will compete for global predominance.”

Workplace romances are always complicated affairs, but when your workplace is the stage, and your profession involves constant physical contact that would get you arrested in any other office, things get even more complex. “A demanding schedule makes it difficult for men and women in the marrying years to find a match outside the studio. There are currently eight confirmed couples at [Canada’s] National Ballet… Most ballet couples are not seen together onstage. And a lot of married or cohabiting pairs had a professional relationship long before they ever went on a date.”

“Whatever else [Mikhail] Baryshnikov, 59, has done in the busy and productive years since he became a household name after his 1974 defection from the Soviet Union, his life as a dancer has remained surprisingly constant for surprisingly long… [He] has always had wide-ranging and eclectic interests, and he is much admired in the dance world for using his celebrity to provide opportunities for less established artists.”

The fledgling Luminato festival dominated Toronto’s arts scene in the first half of June, and that wasn’t good news for the National Ballet, which saw its ticket sales dip. “But out of this sorry situation comes some good news. Luminato and the National Ballet have just agreed to be partners next year, and are already negotiating terms of a deal under which Luminato funding would help the cash-strapped dance company produce a major new work, the drawing power of which would be augmented by serious marketing support.”

Savion Glover’s mentor, Gregory Hines, “was famous for his inclusive, galvanizing efforts on behalf of the tap world. Mr. Glover, in contrast, has withdrawn from it, largely because of his distaste for the festival circuit. Other tap dancers have expressed reservations about festivals, but none have been as vehement as Mr. Glover. And none have had his pulpit. He describes festivals as increasingly impersonal and business-oriented, adding that they do little to develop the artistry and intellect of aspiring tap dancers.”

“The recent project that has created the most waves internationally is Klaus Obermaier’s version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which will be performed at the South Bank in London next week. The piece uses a conventional orchestra and a live dancer, Julia Mach, whose movements trigger off various electronic events, with semi-improvised patterns on a back screen. The audience wear 3D goggles (a 1950s throwback) and the event promises to be a fascinating re-imagining of Stravinsky’s orgiastic classic.”

“Chinese-born, contemporary choreographer and dancer Shen Wei, is leader of the 14-member Shen Wei Dance Arts. But Shen, also a trained painter, views the wide-open floor with the longing of an artist. For him, it is something closer to a canvas, beckoning to be filled. And so in his 2004 dance “Connect Transfer,” that’s what Shen did – he put canvas on the floor and devised a way for his 14 dancers to deposit pigment on it in the act of dancing. The dance and the resulting painting are an unusual exploration and collision of movement and image.”