Category: dance

Choreographer Sarah Michelson’s breakout hit “Group Experience has spawned so many imitations that the dance concert as self-conscious rock gig, with the audience as part of the action, has become a recognizable subgenre.”

Choreographer Jorma Elo has a full slate of new pieces debuting in high places this season. “Unlike most successful choreographers, who start out as dancers then switch to full-time dance making once they have enough work, he continued to perform with the Nederlands Dans Theater until just two years ago. Asked why, he said simply, ‘I loved it’.”

Officials are giving new artistic director Karen Kain much of the credit. “Kain brought new energy to every level of the organization and the results were seen on the stage, in fundraising and at the box office.”

“The practitioners of the new stuff probably imagine they’re making the performance-equivalent of conceptual art–that the dance is as much about dance as it is a dance. Fine, except where’s the dance? It’s like they’re making a sandwich with mostly only bread.”

“Dance has retreated to being just plain dance. The big companies, worldwide, are in the doldrums — what’s the last new piece that le tout New York had to go to? Who’s a star as exalted as the Margots and the Mishas? The ground has leveled: We’re reduced to the latest (exhausted) new wavelet at B.A.M., the smorgasbord at the Joyce, A.B.T.’s tired full-evening classics (except when they aren’t), and City Ballet’s 70th or 80th new piece by Peter Martins. And what about that scarily graying audience in those scarily unsold-out theaters?” Is the antidote a cheap dance festival with screaming fans?

“Aiming to become what artistic directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary call ‘a major company that belongs to L.A. — that has a local flavor at an international level,’ the newly formed Los Angeles Ballet has announced its first season of performances and placed subscription tickets on sale… The current roster includes 21 resident professional dancers on 21-week contracts. Home is the Malibu Performing Arts Center. The projected annual budget is $1.7 million.”

The Springdance Dialogue, an off-year offshoot of the Springdance festival in the Netherlands, is visiting New York’s Dance Theater Workshop. “The dialogues, which vary depending on participants’ resources and interests, arose in 2000 from a question: how can established organizations help young, independent choreographers — those not linked to an institution like an opera house or running a big company — maintain their artistic integrity while sustaining careers?”

“Cunningham has a reputation for Difficult Art. On the high-culture scale, he’s considered so high you would need a telescope. But difficulty for its own sake has never been his point.”

“At 41, Sylvie Guillem is reinventing herself. Having become perhaps the most celebrated ballerina of her generation, she is now becoming a contemporary dancer. As they exit their 30’s, most dancers try to minimize risk to extend their time on the stage. But ballet’s reigning diva is embracing it. Only a handful of ballerinas make it past 40, so Ms. Guillem, bored by the classics and determined to test new forms and her own limits, is exploring her options while she still has them. And she is doing so by performing the most physically demanding movement of her career.”

“As Oakland arts lovers are still smarting from the Oakland Ballet’s closure, Ronn Guidi is back. ‘Ronn Guidi’s ‘Nutcracker’ will run four performances, Dec. 22-24, at the Paramount Theatre, with live music from the Oakland East Bay Symphony. The return of this 33-year tradition is also the first glimmer of possible regeneration for ballet in Oakland.”