Category: dance

Four National Ballet of Canada dancers are pregnant and due this summer. “In the past, perhaps one dancer might be pregnant in a season, not four. This has meant a full-scale rearrangement of roles for the rest of the season and the beginning of the next, while also putting pressure on other dancers in the Toronto-based company to rise to the occasion to fill the roles.”

“The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet has canceled the Aspen Dance Festival this summer, because of a facelift under way on the Aspen District Theatre and the unavailability of a suitable, alternative venue.”

Choreographer Paul Taylor’s “range has always been, well, rangy — which is how he was sometimes described when he was a tall, swift, astonishing dancer, first in Martha Graham’s company, then in his own, which turned 50 in 2004. The reach of Taylor’s musical choices have matched the complexity and speed of his choreography, fulfilled by the remarkable movers he continues to teach, challenge, and inspire.”

The internet provides a great opportunity to use multimedia to enhance writing about dance. “If multimedia in the dance environment can ‘amplify’ our understanding of movement, why can’t incorporating multimedia into our dance reading experience ‘amplify’ our knowledge of dance?”

“Amateur ballet dancing is not so easy. Yet a substratum of dedicated — even fanatical — amateurs does exist. They give small recitals at studios or work with teachers to create a dance and have it videotaped. Others who become advanced take part in small-town “Nutcracker” performances. Many women and men become dedicated class-takers, often mingling in open classes with professional dancers.”

Like most arts genres, the dance world was hit hard by the AIDS crisis, and fifteen years ago, the dancers of the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Ballet organized a benefit called “Shut Up And Dance” to raise money for an organization that cares for those suffering from the disease. The benefit, which has become an annual event, gives dancers a chance to choreograph their own work, and raises as much as $150,000 per year.

“Dance photography may seem like a logical endeavor, but it represents an incompatible dichotomy: Dance is motion, photography is stillness. No matter how talented the photographer or how beautiful the dancers, the art forms are inherently at odds.” Photographer David Michalek has found a way to reconcile them.

“The first of its kind in Los Angeles, the Cedars-Sinai/USC Dance Medicine Center will offer comprehensive injury treatment, rehabilitation and preventive care tailored to professional and recreational dancers.”

“As in other sectors of Chinese culture, foreign visitors say, the rate of change is mind-boggling. If, that is, his hosts can raise the money. These days, the main hurdle faced by contemporary dance in China is far more familiar to Western artists: financing.”

When Carlos Acosta dances with the Bolshoi this summer it will bring together the most feted male star of British ballet and the most celebrated dance company in the world.