Category: dance

The current contract negotiations between Washington Ballet and its dancers could best be described as an extended meltdown, with both sides dug in and spouting vitriol at their opponent through the press. So it should have been a positive development last week when Michael Kaiser, president of Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, offered to mediate the talks. Kaiser is widely respected in the arts world by both managers and performers, and he has stepped into the middle of more than one labor dispute with good results. But Washington Ballet’s management team wants nothing to do with mediation, saying that “we’re just not there yet.” A representative of the dancers, who have been out of work since mid-December, called the ballet’s rejection of Kaiser “asinine.”

“Ballet, in the present day, has lost much of its dialogue with the progressive visual arts, which have raced into post-modernism and beyond. It risks getting left behind unless it can, once more, find a willing partner in another art and achieve a synchronous rebirth.”

“In Australia, dance, the art form that epitomises our ideal image of ourselves as a nation of youthful athleticism, is in peril. Melbourne is home to many significant dance institutions. This city was once noted for its feisty, provocative and prolific independent dance scene, but the dance performance calendars of the past two years suggest the creative ferment is dying for lack of sustenance.”

For the first time in its history, New York City Ballet has named a composer-in-residence. Bright Sheng, the Chinese-American composer who has collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma on the wildly successful Silk Road Project, will compose two new works for the ballet over the next three seasons, and several of his existing works will also be choreographed. The appointment is part of NYC Ballet’s artist-in-residence program, which has previously focused on conductors, choreographers, and costume designers.

Are the 1960s back in dance? “It was 40 years from the 1920’s, the previous great liberating decade, to the 60’s, and 40 years from the 60’s to now. Maybe the societal shifts that provided so fertile a climate for the 60’s are about to burst forth again; you can’t repress youthful energy and optimism forever.”

Acrobat shows in China have been on the decline. By contrast, “Swan Lake” is hugely popular there. Now an acrobatic troupe has produced a version of the ballet classic, and it’s a hit. “Surprisingly, its acrobatic version of “Swan Lake” has taken China by storm, filling houses in more than half a dozen cities, including more than 30 sold-out performances at the Shanghai Grand Theater, where it premiered last March.”

Ismene Brown has plenty of dreams for UK dance – starting with: “Wales at last has its own ballet company, and the new Welsh National Ballet, linking up with Welsh National Opera in lively opera-ballet bills, soon establishes an individual artistic identity, as Birmingham Royal Ballet and Northern Ballet Theatre have done in the Midlands and the North.”

The Baghdad suburb of Mansour is known mostly these days for the near-constant sound of bombs, set off by insurgents targeting the new Iraqi army, and for the cries of those whose loved ones are caught in the crossfire. But Mansour is also home to Iraq’s one and only Music and Ballet School, where a dedicated staff of teachers and professionals works to fill the lives of Iraqi children with a love of dance. In post-Saddam Iraq, anti-Western sentiment runs strong, and many at the school now keep their Western-derived professions secret from all but those closest to them. But asked how many Shiites and how many Sunnis make up the student body, the school’s director has one firm answer: “We don’t know. We have students.”

A prominent board member resigns, complaining about the company’s direction. “Over the past few years, my escalating concerns over serious issues of governance made it impossible for me to continue. I am no longer willing to support an institution that increasingly bears so little resemblance to the one that George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein bequeathed to their successors, and to which I have been committed for over twenty years since my Chairmanship of the 50th Anniversary campaign in 1984.”