Category: dance

Singer Joni Mitchell is collaborating with Alberta Ballet to create a new dance. Attention to the project has been huge. “For the small-market ballet company, which produces only five shows a year, it’s been a bit overwhelming. For Mitchell, who will be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on Jan. 28, it’s even more daunting because it’s her big debut after years away from the public eye.”

It’s been 32 years since New York City Ballet last performed Jerome Robbins’ “Dybbuk,” set to music by Leonard Bernstein… The piece ahad a lukewarm reception. Would Robbins have wanted “Dybbuk” revived? “You mean, is he rolling over in his grave? It’s possible. But people will accept the dance more now. Robbins’ earthbound approach is no longer alien to ballet.”

There’s a ballroom dance boom across America after football star Emmitt Smith’s “Dancing with the Stars” win last fall. “Dance instructors across the country say Smith’s victory in November has redefined the boundaries of coolness and inspired legions of reluctant men who otherwise considered dancing beneath their dignity.”

It’s Sadlers Wells. “There are drawbacks to the dance intensity at the Wells, with opera being the main loser – only two weeks this year… Dance, however, is on such a roll that he hardly needs opera, and everyone, it seems, has got the message that Sadlers Wells is where dance comes first.”

London’s Royal Ballet has scooped up six of eight Olivier Awards nominations. “The only dance production originating outside London to be recognized was a staging of two kabuki dramas by a visiting company featuring Japanese superstar Ebizo Ichikawa XI.”

Blogger Doug Fox has pulled together a page of links to videos, articles and pictures of Merce Cunningham…

“It may seem unclear exactly what they were protesting about, since Simone Clarke did not goose-step on stage. But their message was clear enough: the arts must be politically policed to ensure that artists are ‘free’ of incorrect opinions. If those standards were imposed across the board, we would have to ‘kick out’ everything from Wagner to Mel Gibson.”

“Stomp the Yard” takes top honors. “Starring Columbus Short as a raw but talented dancer at the center of a step competition between rival college fraternities, the Sony Screen Gems movie knocked off 20th Century Fox’s ‘Night at the Museum,’ which had been the top film for three straight weekends.”

Big demonstrations against an English National Ballet principal dancer. “Inside the audience there ensued plenty of scuffling, an overture nearly drowned out by shouting and – this being the ballet – a whole lot of ‘ssshing’.”

Charles France was Mikhail Baryshnikov’s right hand man at ABT. He was “influential in programming and casting, and he worked closely with the press and marketing departments at Ballet Theater, where he helped to shape the careers of many young American dancers, including Susan Jaffe and Robert La Fosse. But his brash opinions and perceived favoritism alienated dancers; he played the bad cop to Mr. Baryshnikov’s good cop.”