Category: dance

“William Forsythe has introduced his newly formed company to New York with a work oddly short on choreography. For those who have followed Forsythe’s successful, if lately turbulent, career in Germany, the choice was baffling. It may be prophetic, indicating Forsythe’s plans for the future.”

“To judge from its own statistics, Cirque du Soleil has taken over the circus world. Drawing, like other major circuses, from the same international pool of small traveling circuses and circus schools, augmented by fresh talent from Eastern Europe and Asia, Cirque du Soleil has elevated the once marginal and innovative “new circus” experiments of Europe into an international brand name. The Cirque format has surpassed the older-fashioned, sawdust plus painted clowns plus animal acts of Barnum & Bailey, wedding instead the jugglers and acrobats and its own kind of clowns to formulaic fantasies.”

“Of the four other major Balanchine-driven companies in the United States — along with the Miami City Ballet, serious contenders include the Boston Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet — dancers now have viable alternatives. When Balanchine was alive, City Ballet was the Vatican; now, with directors like Mr. Villella, a City Ballet star of the 1960’s and 70’s who cherishes the kind of coaching in depth that is not part of City Ballet’s system, the choice of whether or not to stay in New York isn’t so clear-cut.”

The troubled Martha Graham Company season was down to one performance – a gala – this year. And there’s plenty that’s not working right, writes Joan Acocella. “So certain things didn’t work. And for a portion of the Graham audience, I suspect, [artistic director Janet] Eilber’s whole effort to renovate this repertory is not going to work. No artist ever had a greater reputation for high-mindedness than Graham. That was part of her mystique, and so, for some of her old fans, a program like this is going to look like a cheap sales job.”

The Southern California company is losing its troops piece by piece. “Husband and wife John Gardner and Amanda McKerrow, former dancers with American Ballet Theatre, will leave their administrative posts with the Irvine-based company when their contracts are up at the end of July.”

This year’s New York City Ballet Diamond features seven chorographers. “Now in its sixth installment, the project was the idea of Peter Martins, balletmaster in chief of City Ballet. And he had an enthusiastic sponsor in Irene Diamond, a feisty former Hollywood script and talent scout who became a philanthropist. Today her fund is a major sponsor of the project.”

“Numerous well-placed critics have expressed their dismissive doubts about Mr. Martins. No one, including Mr. Martins, claims that he is Balanchine’s equivalent. The gamut of opinion seems to range from those who think he is doing an honorable job, as good as could be expected, to those who proclaim, often stridently, that he has presided over the erosion of the Balanchine repertory without finding new sources of choreographic talent, that he has failed to school and develop his younger dancers properly, that he has robbed Balanchine’s ballets of their soul. “

“Studies show the otherworldly beings who beautify the world’s stages with seemingly effortless stretches, extreme turnouts, leaps and lifts are engaging in an activity as challenging as any high-level contact sport. As a result, dance medicine has steadily outgrown its sports medicine niche identity in recent years, due to increasing awareness of ballet’s hard-core physical and mental challenges.”

In 20 years, the company has become a major regional company. The troupe has grown from 19 dancers to 50, from a $1-million annual budget to $10million, and from a single base in Miami Beach to seasons in four metro-area counties. “Somebody has to do it, so I do,” he says. “I talk about the repertoire and I break down the abstractions, where these geniuses reduced things to their poetic essence.”

The Matthew Bourne reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” has hit a wall of indifference in Washington, D.C. after successful runs in London, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Organizers have canceled the entire planned D.C. run of the show, which was slated to begin this week, due to sluggish ticket sales.