Category: dance

“There will always be those for whom the roles of citizen and artist are mutually exclusive. In American dance, politically engaged works have generally been regarded warily.” William Forsythe has created a new anti-war piece: ‘Forsythe’s Guernica,’ one critic has called it. “But Mr. Forsythe, one of ballet’s most influential choreographers, prefers to see it as, simply, ‘an act of citizenship’.”

Questions have been raised about Orange County’s new Samueli Theatre’s suitability for dance. “A Spanish flamenco dance troupe canceled one of its performances and the crew had difficulty transforming the bare, flexible space to meet and satisfy the company’s technical needs.” It “canceled the second night of its five-day run in November after two dancers sustained injuries they said were caused by flooring that was incorrectly assembled.”

Alastair Macaulay is the chief theater critic of the London-based Financial Times and chief dance critic of the Times Literary Supplement. “Why just ballet and modern dance? Those aren’t all the dance there is. I’ve also written about dance in Disney films, dance in the Astaire-Rogers movies, Indian dance, flamenco, ballroom, Pilobolus, and other genres. I do not claim to have expertise on all forms of dance, but I do not claim that expertise is a critic’s starting-point anyway.”

“The Royal didn’t just continue dancing through the war years – it heroically danced for Britain. The company, still at that time called the Vic Wells Ballet, was kept in business largely because the government decided it could be useful for morale.”

“Alastair Macaulay is to be the next chief dance critic of The New York Times, the newspaper announced to its staff today. Macaulay, chief theater critic of the Financial Times and previously chief dance critic of The Times Literary Supplement, succeeds John Rockwell, who “retired”(his word) in December after 26 years with the newspaper, the last two of them as chief dance critic.”

“The 33-year- old Cuban Carlos Acosta is a principal guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London. Acosta’s art is a combination of physique, discipline, personality and brains. What distinguishes him is a connection to the real world. He is not about repeating old versions of the same role: He is entirely in the moment. Even in tights and on tiptoes, Acosta strives to maintain ties to his roots.”

Royal Ballet star Tamara Rojo at 32, “far from being a fake, has proved herself worldwide to be one of the art’s greatest ballerinas. The highest evidence of this lies in her conquest of the apex of classical ballet, Swan Lake, in which she has a magic unequalled on the British stage, a rare privilege to see.”

“Ballerinas – whose art requires them to be ultra-slender – may not immediately strike one as the ideal template for solving the problems of underweight models. But Jane Hackett, the principal of the English National Ballet school, yesterday joined the ‘size zero’ debate, publicly stating that the school bans students who are too thin and called on the fashion industry to follow suit.”

Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon is working on a commission for the Bolshoi Ballet. Many are wondering if this is the start of a longer partnership. “The role of new, international choreography at the Bolshoi, a theater with a reputation built on the grandeur of its productions, is controversial in Russia’s dance world.”

The executive director of Washington Ballet, who presided over a bitter labor dispute with the company’s dancers that saw the 2005 run of The Nutcracker canceled, has resigned unexpectedly to become the chief executive at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Jason Palmquist becomes the fourth executive to quit Washington Ballet since 1999.