Category: dance

Ballet Florida is stepping up its game, making new hires and expanding its activities in Palm Beach. “The changes come two years after the Miami City Ballet expanded its presence in Palm Beach County by adding more shows at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts and establishing a development arm there. That company’s efforts have paid off with fundraising dollars increasing 45 percent in two years and attendance to Kravis Center performances growing to 25,529 at 25 performances during the season.”

“Often billed as ‘the greatest male dancer of his generation’, Carlos Acosta has become almost as busy behind the scenes as he is on stage. This summer he’s producing and directing two London seasons. The first, at Sadler’s Wells, features him and various Royal Ballet colleagues in a week of choreography both contemporary and classical. The second, at the Coliseum, is a revival of Tocororo, the Cuban-flavoured show he created in 2003.”

It feels like a moment of transition for New Yok City Ballet, writes Robert Gottlieb. “Senior dancers past their prime are moving inexorably toward retirement—some gracefully, some with obvious reluctance. There are stirrings in the ranks of the ballet masters and mistresses which may gradually lead to needed changes in casting and coaching. Andrea Quinn, the stimulating resident music director, is leaving (her successor hasn’t been announced). One can feel an effort being made to bring back to life certain Balanchine ballets that have been in dire decline… And the results of the Diamond Project itself, although over-publicized and underwhelming, were more positive than those of any of its five predecessors.”

“Twenty years ago, it was practically heresy for a ballet dancer to even talk about life beyond the footlights. But times have changed. Now it’s common for dancers to receive career counseling, education advice, and even financial aid for college while they’re still performing.”

What accounts for the huge popularity of programs such as the summer dancing on the plaza at Lincoln Center? “Dance is something you already know even if you think you don’t. Look in the street or in a schoolyard, and you will know right away if a person is sad or happy by the way they hold themselves, by the way they walk.”

No one actually likes ballet competitions (except, of course, the winners.) But the contests have become a way of life in the dance world, and though “they arouse heated debates about their utility and relevance to the art form,” they also serve as a useful way for dancers to hone their skills and perform under pressure.

“The great thing about Russian writers of the late nineteenth century was their willingness to address, directly, the hardest questions of human life. That tradition was inherited by Russian choreographers. Nijinsky in ‘The Rite of Spring’; his sister, Bronislava Nijinska, in ‘Les Noces’; Balanchine in most of what he did—at times, you almost turn away from what they’re saying. It’s too much. With Alexei Ratmansky, you don’t have to turn away, or not yet, but the instinct is the same. Unlike most ballet choreographers working in this country right now, he takes on the great themes—love, grief, marriage, death—and looks them straight in the face.”

“If one presumes that one of the goals of becoming a conductor is to deepen your interpretation of the repertory, conducting for ballet does not do that, because it’s about suiting the dance and the demands of the choreographer.”

“Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre announced Thursday a three-year contract extension for artistic director Terrence S. Orr, as well as its 30-dancer roster, starting with the 2006-07 season. Ten new dancers have been hired and six promoted… The resignation of four principal dancers was announced earlier this season. Seven members of the corps are not returning.”

It’s been a year and a half since New York City Ballet began its search for a new music director to replace Andrea Quinn, who steps down from the post this weekend. For some, the search process, which is expected to be concluded sometime this summer, has been exhilirating, but some of the ballet’s musicians have taken to referring to the process as the “New York City Ballet School of Conducting,” a reference to the greenness of many of the candidates.