Category: dance

The union has characterized the situation as a lockout by management. But the Washington Ballet calls it a strike. “For them to be actually hurting the very income source that gives us the ability to do everything we want to do for them is incomprehensible to me,” said Kay Kendall, president of the ballet’s board of directors.

“After the postmodern multidisciplinary melting pot era, it’s my opinion that the dance world is in need for specializing again: finding new movement techniques, new working ethics, new ways how the art form could communicate to an dance-alienated public who has lost contact with their own bodies. Though both the infrastructure and the financial situation necessary for accomplishing this is within the US unfortunately almost completely absent, the mindset for establishing for such developments is most definitely there. And that’s where it all starts.”

Washington Ballet has canceled its performance of Nutcracker tonight because of a labor dispute. “Further performances of the holiday ballet — as well as the rest of the company’s season — are in question after management decided yesterday evening to cancel tonight’s show. Executive Director Jason Palmquist said he was forced to do so because the dancers’ union called a strike. The union denied this.”

Tere O’Connor: “What is wonderful about New York right now is that a large group of young makers are not referring to dance history they are not looking at the hierarchies derived from the idiotic , anachronistic power structures of the ballet world or other institutionalized systems. This has created in New York a situation in which young artists and old share a lot of time and thought outside of the constraints of a traditional old/young dialectic.”

Washington Ballet’s continuing labor problems have flared up again. The troupe’s performance of “The Nutcracker” is in jeopardy “because of an impasse between the dancers’ union and the company. At issue are a number of health and safety concerns, with the union claiming that too many strenuous rehearsals have led to injuries among the dancers.”

So what makes a lively dance “scene,” asks Lane Czaplinski. “I find it ironic that while we (people who care about dance) are always quick to site the problems in the field–a lack of resources, waning attendance, regurgitated aesthetics, etc.–that we are also quick to take offense at precisely the kind of provocative writing that can get people to give a damn. If there is any threat to the dance field, it is that not enough people care about it. Perhaps this is because people read too much puffy marketing rhetoric and too many namby-pamby reviews that do nothing to enliven one’s engagement with the form.”

“So does the U.S. still matter in dance terms? For the moment, it does. Someday, possibly soon, it won’t. The America of the world’s imagination, in dance terms, is New York. That’s where people outside the U.S. still understand that cultural control holds sway. And it remains a place where everybody would love to present their work.”

“The Colorado Ballet’s choice of its next artistic director is critical to the organization’s very survival. And a key factor in that selection is determining whether the person should be a choreographer and, if so, how much that choreography should shape his or her tenure.”

Latinos have begun to shine in ballet and are taking U.S. stages by surprise…

“Only in recent years has Handel’s piece — composed in 1741 and long associated with Christmas, though it was intended, one biographer wrote, ‘as a timely thought-provoker for Lent and Easter’ — been interpreted by choreographers. Schroeder points out that it has often been difficult for dance companies, including hers, to find willing collaborators among classical musicians, many of whom believe “Messiah” is strictly for voice and orchestra.”