Category: dance

“Eyes were raised to far horizons, and suddenly you could begin to see it stretching 20 years. Sadler’s Wells moved into production, dance buildings are completing for Rambert and Siobhan Davies, and the spectacular new Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff is a dance gateway for the neglected west.”

“Ballet Victoria made its official debut two years ago February with a new hip-hop inspired rendition of Peter Pan. That inaugural production, which featured the Esquimalt Singers and Dancers as a gang of young pirate recruits, was warmly received by the community and toured around Vancouver Island. It also helped the company raise the money it needed to establish a permanent dance centre, which was opened with much fanfare last summer by honorary patron Karen Kain.”

Since her appointment in April 2004, Rachel Moore, a former dancer, now 41, has taken firm hold of an unwieldy, creaky organization that is also a great one, constantly beset by financial problems, yet somehow managing to produce the spectacular productions and dancers for which it is famous. Since Ms. Moore took over, Ballet Theater’s endowment has risen from $8 million to $15 million; its City Center season this fall showed box office gains of 30 percent over the previous year; and for the first time in six years, an operating deficit has disappeared and a modest surplus is projected when audit results are released next week.

Rutgers University anthropologists, for the first time collaborating with University of Washington computer scientists have linked dancing ability to desirability. The best dancers, they found, have the greatest body symmetry.

“The dispute over whether the dancers had declared a strike last week (management’s view) or were locked out by management (as the dancers claim) has been given a new twist. For the past two days, when the dancers have shown up for their previously scheduled rehearsals, they have been turned away by Artistic Director Septime Webre. Money is not the primary issue. The thorny questions involve how much control Webre should have. Can he hire and fire without restrictions? Can he change the size of the company? Should there be limits on how he conducts rehearsals to prevent injuries?”

Alicia Graf has “been discovered not once but twice, is a dynamic young star capable of driving normally sober New York dance critics into paroxysms of delight. The first discovery came when she performed as a teenager with Dance Theater of Harlem in the late 1990’s. Now she is at it again in her first year with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater…”

So you want to be a dancer. Should you go to college? Debatable. “College-level dance programs are proliferating. Dance magazine’s College Guide lists more than 500 such programs, up from 131 in 1966. But stable, paying jobs in the field are hard to find. And the utility of a college degree in dancing is a matter of endless debate.”

Montreal has a new dance festival to replace the collapsed Festival Internationale de Nouvelle Danse (FIND), and it will apparently have a theatrical component as well. Marie-Hélène Falcon, the artistic director of the new fest, is a big name in the Quebec theatre world. “[Her] winning proposal was determined by a rigorous open competition. The key to success was proposing an event that would satisfy the expectations of the dance community.” The CAN$1.8 million budget reserved for FIND will go to the new festival.

“Facing a stubborn impasse with its dancers over labor issues, the Washington Ballet has canceled all remaining performances of The Nutcracker, which was to have run through Dec. 24 at the Warner Theatre.” The company and its dancers disagreed over whether the dispute, which had already led several performances to be canceled, was a strike or a lockout. The head of the dancers’ union was shocked by the cancellation of the entire, and accused the company of having no interest in reaching an agreement.

Murray Louis had quite the eclectic upbringing in the dance world, and his dizzying array of experiences made him one of the late 20th century’s most intriguing choreographers. Along with his personal and professional partner, Alwin Nikolais, “he evolved a distinct choreographic signature that came out of the movement technique he and Mr. Nikolais developed. Most choreographers, including George Balanchine and Martha Graham, would extend a dance vocabulary through their choreography and then bring the ‘new’ movement to classroom training. Mr. Nikolais and Mr. Louis did the reverse.” Still, he fears for the future of the form: “Creatively strong leaders are not coming out of dance… There is a lot of splintering.”