Category: dance

A South African dance company plans “a double-pronged attack on existing Guinness World Records – the biggest ballet class ever taught and the most dancers to be on pointe together for one minute.” The company is recruiting 600 dancers for the attempt.

Colorado Ballet’s survival is on the shoulders of new director Gil Boggs. “It is not much of an overstatement to say that the very survival of the company rests on him as it tries to reverse a financial crisis and repair its image after the controversial firing of 19-year artistic director Martin Fredmann in October.”

Choreographer Christopher “Wheeldon may well, like George Balanchine, expand the boundaries of what is considered classical ballet. Taken as a whole, Mr. Wheeldon’s ballets are like the rooms of a mansion. Some are grand, some simple, and most of them are inviting. The rooms of ‘Liturgy,’ ‘Klavier’ and most of all ‘After the Rain’ look out not only on the gentle hills and craggy precipices of classical ballet, but also on the wide-open sea of a ballet that is rooted in classicism, as Balanchine’s innovations were, but also enriched and transformed by modern dance of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

Cathy Edwards, artistic director of Dance Theater Workshop since 2003 and a central figure in the New York modern-dance community, is to step down on June 30…

Paul Kaine, currently director of the Nashville Ballet, has been chosen as executive director of the Cincinnati Ballet. Kaine “brings to the Cincinnati company more than 20 years of experience in performing arts administration, development, marketing and the creation of educational outreach programs.”

The ‘Stars of the 21st Century,’ an annual gala that returned on Monday to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center ought to offer much but delivers kitsch. “At fault is the vulgar attitude toward dancing displayed in the so-called “defilé,” where all the gala participants leap and twirl, performing stunts like animals in a circus ring. The tastelessness of this finale, which spoils the curtain calls each year, has begun to leach into the gala proper.”

“Publicly supported British dance seems politically correct to a fault. There were dances for babies and for the elderly, for the fit and the disabled, for people of most every culture and color, for adult audiences and children, for trained dancers and everyday folk. There was no ballet and not much classical-music accompaniment. But there was modern dance (“contemporary dance,” in British parlance) of every kind. Contemporary dance here is strung between the poles of abstraction and ‘physical theater,’ which is so engrained as to seem almost old-fashioned.”

“Veteran New York City Ballet fans — who witnessed the glory days under Balanchine — habitually carp about Peter Martins’s ballets. Even these naysayers admit he has craft, but they sense the absence of imagination. They’re also put off by the aridity of his pieces in the classical mode and the hostility between the sexes that prevails in his contemporary-style works. It’s possible, too, that the detractors conflate Martins’s lack of choreographic genius with other perceived flaws. During his tenure, the custodianship of the Balanchine repertoire has, arguably, been careless.”

Dance has always been focused on the body, of course, but the latest trend in modern dance is taking things to a whole new level, with an increasing number of dancers appearing completely naked onstage. “The upsurge isn’t rooted in sexual liberation, as it was when nude bodies appeared onstage in the 1960’s, or in political defiance, as when they re-emerged in the 80’s. Instead… nudity is a way to force the audience into some form of discomfort.”

Oakland Ballet may be gone, but California’s Bay Area remains one of the most vibrant dance scenes in the U.S. That’s a good thing, of course, but with literally hundreds of companies of all sizes and shapes competing for attention (and audience,) staying solvent can be a day-to-day proposition. Some companies look for a cultural niche to fill, while others seek a unique geographic location that will allow them to put down neighborhood roots. Donor fatigue is a real concern, as is duplication – too much of the same thing in a single area.