Category: dance

New York’s dance scene has a lot of activity. But a new study portrays a difficult existence. “The survey depicts an economically starved art form in which few practitioners are adequately compensated, health insurance is rare, and the effort to find rehearsal space is increasingly Herculean. Among the especially grim findings, 58 percent of respondents say they have no paid staff, with just 37 of the 310 who responded to the question claiming dancers as salaried employees and only 18 of 294 respondents owning rehearsal space.”

“The Colorado Ballet’s attendance fell 16.8 percent in 2006-07 from a year earlier, a drop triggered in part by two canceled performances and the company’s efforts to scale back the number of complimentary tickets it distributes annually.”

American Ballet Theater is staging Sleeping Beauty for the third time in as many decades, and Apollinaire Scherr says that the presence of Russian ballerina extraordinaire Diana Vishneva alone could make the production a winner. “If anyone could get a leg to convey sincerity, fervor, charity, joy and valor, it is certainly Vishneva.”

“It is tempting to believe that people’s deeply ingrained expectations about how dancers — like movie stars and models — should look apply chiefly to ballet. But contemporary dancers are also held to rigid physical standards, which generally have little to do with ability or health, let alone art.”

Though now largely confined to a wheelchair, Cunningham still teaches the advanced technique class at his studio twice a week, in addition to constantly working on new choreography. He also draws every day, mostly sketches of animals, “as a way of putting my mind on something else. I can’t move much, but I can still twiddle my feet. To my dancers, I will attempt to show whatever I can and explain the rest. I don’t enjoy talking, but I do it.”

“Critics and audiences rank her at the top of her profession. Her backstage reputation is that of being a staunch trouper, a loyal colleague and a good laugh. Without being pompous about it, she’s kept her family life – banker husband, two daughters – private. She’s managed to have fun on the glamour side of things without cheapening herself, and she’s generously and unaffectedly given her time to a lot of worthy causes.”

“At 38, she still looks like a racehorse. She promises there will be no comebacks, but I wonder how much this lovely dancer will really enjoy putting herself out to grass.”

“It’s hard to believe that Darcy Bussell is ready to retire. Her dancing shows no trace of fading technique, her jump still high, her line still bold and pure. When she unfurls a leg into a high extension, the height is the least spectacular quality. The movement has a sumptuous ease, velvet-textured.”

A small firestorm has erupted in the New York dance world over a slap to the face added to a City Ballet production of Romeo & Juliet. “For many viewers this moment blights the choreographer Peter Martins’s City Ballet production. For some, moreover, it connects to other recent presentations of violence against women onstage.”

San Francisco Ballet has unveiled plans for its 75th anniversary season, and the year will include no fewer than ten world premieres, as well as “an international tribute to the company with visits by the New York City Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada and Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.”