Category: dance

“Darcey Bussell, regarded by many as the most inspiring dancer of her generation… leaves the Royal Ballet, her mentor and springboard, next June.” At 37, Bussell is already two years past the age when she planned to retire, and her body can no longer tolerate the physical demands of her craft. “The question is what Bussell will do next. She has a packed schedule for the first six months of next year, but after June – nothing.”

Tech workers in India have discovered dance as a way to stay healthy. “Within a short span, there has been a steady rise in the number of dance studios and professionals who frequent them, says Lokesh Naik, a senior technical writer with an IT firm and a regular visitor to the Bangalore arm of dance studio network ‘Swingers’.”

“The Colorado Ballet ended 2005-06 with a $114,000 surplus, a big turnaround from the $545,000 deficit it ran in 2004-05, including accounting allowances for depreciation.”

“Happy Feet has many felicities. It’s beautifully designed, it’s frequently funny (especially the five Latino penguins, definitely not emperors, whose streetwise leader, Ramón, has the voice of Robin Williams), and it’s feel-goody without being nauseating. It manages to leaven a somewhat clichéd situation with a clever blend of young people’s music–hip-hop, rap, soul: Disney it isn’t. And it confirms what dance people have always known: Dancing liberates, heals, binds.”

“The fourth biennial Nijinsky Awards, considered the Oscars of the dance world, were presented Thursday on a stage where, nearly a century ago, legendary dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky often choreographed, rehearsed and performed: the recently restored Monte Carlo Opera House.”

What is it about the Sugar Plum Fairy that sets so many ballerinas’ hearts atwitter? Hers is not a leading role, not even close, and compared to some of the leaping, cavorting characters in The Nutcracker, she’s not even that interesting from a dance point of view. “Sugar Plum is always in danger of being little more than a pink and pretty vacuum – which is why a succession of producers have attempted to invent extra substance for her.”

The company named Wayne McGregor as its new resident choreographer, and it’s an oddly inspired choice. “The world as seen by Wayne McGregor is a world apart from the warm, centrally heated classrooms of the Royal Ballet School and the dainty interval sandwiches of Covent Garden. It is a mindset that engages with the real world of conflict and abandonment, of cruelty and technological revolution, of commonality and infinite human difference. It is a new world for the Royal Ballet, a renaissance by any other name.”

San Diego is seeing a boom in dance performances by young choreographers staging their work in makeshift spaces…

The company opens with a new Nutcracker. And it’s not bad, writes Lewis Segal…

The Alvin Ailey Company unveils a new look. “Two additions to the repertory unveiled in the first week of the Ailey’s monthlong season at the City Center are by celebrated choreographers — both female, both white, both renegades — who operate far from the themes of black experience, the humanistic outlook, and the conventional sentiments typical of Ailey’s own work.”