Category: dance

At least one London dance critic thinks that Carlos Acosta’s fear for the future of dance is way overblown. “Ballet is in no immediate danger of dying – as an artform it still generates far more new work than opera. And though Acosta may be too modest to acknowledge it, while the profession boasts stars of his calibre, the public will always come flocking.”

As it prepares to move into its new home in Miami’s Carnival Center, Miami City Ballet has landed the largest corporate gift in its history, courtesy of New York-based U.S. Trust. The exact amount of the donation was not disclosed, but the announcement sends a signal that the company is more or less fully recovered from the financial troubles it was experiencing a few years ago.

“In what it calls an effort to reach new audiences, the New York City Ballet has revamped the way it presents performances, creating 10 fixed programs with themes and catchy titles that will rotate over the course of its winter season… The new model does not mean a narrower repertory, however. The company will present 38 separate ballets, roughly the same number as in previous seasons.”

“In American dance a new athleticism has joined artistry at center stage. At the same time performing-arts medicine has matured, and its practitioners now recognize dancers as not only creative artists but also as world-class athletes whose art form seems to demand greater challenges each season. But as dancers jump higher, spin faster and try to stay impossibly thin, might they, like baseball stars and Olympic sprinters, be susceptible to new drug regimens? Performance-enhancing drugs, no longer the realm of musclemen, could also have applications for dancers.”

“In 1999 the choreographer Yoshiko Chuma happened upon a new obsession: cubes. As a shape, the cube is not particularly sexy, but the use of such movable seven-foot frames has invigorated Ms. Chuma’s imagination ever since… In Ms. Chuma’s cube works, musicians and dancers, who constantly reconfigure the frames to show how drastically yet subtly movement can transform itself with the slightest shift of an angle, interact with one another within and around the cubes.”

When Mark Morris announced plans to choreograph a new version of the Delibes-scored ballet, Sylvia, it immediately became one of the most-anticipated events of the 2006 season. But Clive Barnes isn’t the least bit impressed with the results: “Morris, a modern dance master with classic leanings, still approaches ballet like a man talking a foreign language: with a misplaced confidence, a very limited vocabulary and a totally unconvincing accent.”

A nasty split among the founders of Pilobolus has upset “a collaborative dance company founded on utopian principles in the spirit of the 1960’s. The dispute has split current and former trustees and company members. But it is also connected to the sticky business of deciding who controls the rights to a piece of choreography.”

San Francisco Ballet is America’s oldest ballet company. “The company is no longer dismissed as ‘regional.’ [Director Helgi] Tomasson’s biggest challenge may be to define what this company, which for so long simply wanted to be better, wants to be now.”

This summer’s Lincoln Center dance offerings suffer from “festivalism”, writes Apollinaire Sherr. “Of course, people cheered when the lights went out. They were at a festival, where you’ll be damned if you don’t have an experience. Plus, the dance asked us to be kind to ourselves – a voice identifying itself as Rachel came over the sound system to tell us to “connect to pleasure” and put our hands on our thighs “and think that you have plenty of time” (an invitation to self-pity for most New Yorkers) – so we cheered for ourselves. Most likely, though, they were the exact same selves as sat down 70 minutes ear-lier.”

The company says it can save $400,000 a year by ditching musicians an using recorded music. “Ballet officials told members of the company’s orchestra Thursday that they won’t renew the musicians’ three-year contract, which expires at the end of August. The ballet plans to offer a severance package to the 48 union musicians in its orchestra.