Category: dance

“The president and first lady sat on a love seat near the back of the room while performers playing the roles of little Clara, the Prince and dancers from around the world put on a 25-minute show. Three children climbed up to sit with them, but they did not seem distracted by the first couple after the music began and all eyes were on the dancers.”

Bruce Marks has been named interim director of Orlando Ballet. Marks’ appointment follows the unexpected death of Orlando Ballet Artistic Director Fernando Bujones on Nov. 10. Marks became the first American principal dancer at the Royal Danish Ballet and remained there for five years. He was named artistic director of Ballet West in 1976, and then was appointed artistic director of Boston Ballet in 1985.”

“It would be difficult to find a better exemplar of career reinvention than Mikhail Baryshnikov. Of course, he started with a few little advantages, like being one of the most idolized ballet dancers of all time, like being seductively handsome, like having multiple talents and the fame to capitalize on them. He has starred on film and on Broadway and on television. He has choreographed and been artistic director of American Ballet Theater, and founded and starred in his own White Oak Dance Project. But most of his efforts so far have been extensions of his dance career, rather than a transition from it. Now he is overseeing something else, the much-bruited, still almost stealthy Baryshnikov Arts Center.”

“Central Florida has a cornucopia of competing Nutcrackers, all aiming to elbow their way into our holiday-addled consciousness. Armies of young dancers are set to take the stage for this annual ritual of holiday zest and good cheer, while even greater legions of viewers prepare to watch them. The challenge, as ballet directors face an ever-growing roster of Nutcracker productions each year, is to make theirs the show audiences will flock to see. It’s enough to turn directors into stage-apron hucksters.”

“Karole Armitage was part of the city’s cultural zeitgeist in the 1980’s – she had a high-profile relationship with the artist David Salle (with whom she still collaborates) and choreographed for Michael Jackson and Madonna on the side. But by 1989, she was fed up trying to carve out an artistic life in the increasingly mass-market environment of New York.”
Now she’s back…

New York’s Broadway Dance Center, “which has shaped the dreams – and the legs – of Broadway-bound hoofers for more than two decades, may lose its home, becoming the latest example of how the heated real estate market is squeezing arts groups in the city.”

Think being a Rockette looks like fun? Suppose it’s a life full of glamor and adulation for those unbelievably athletic high-steppers who have come to symbolize the entire Radio City Christmas Spectacular? Well, maybe it is, particularly if you consider blown knees, ice-water baths, and sweat-stained leotards to be glamorous.

“The Colorado Ballet has a tough challenge ahead as it tries to a climb out of a financial hole and regain the splintered trust of contributors and audiences. The company, which marks its 45th anniversary this season, suffered a 2004-05 deficit of $341,000 and accumulated debt totaling $700,000. As of Wednesday, it owed $439,000 alone to the city of Denver for rental fees and other production expenses. Perhaps even more damaging has been a steady stream of negative publicity, [which] reached a climax in October, when the company fired 19-year artistic director Martin Fredmann… So far, at least the company’s artistry has not suffered during the current crisis, but can that stability continue?”

The much-beleaguered Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre will soon have a new executive director, and he will have his hands full the minute he sets foot in his office on February 1. But even before officially starting work, Harris Ferris (currently head of Nevada Ballet Theatre) is attempting to mend some of the in-house fences that were demolished when the PBT made the decision to lay off its entire orchestra for the 2005-06 season. Ferris will meet with the orchestra this week in what he says is an effort to “eliminate the acrimony,” and to listen to the musicians’ complaints about PBT’s management system. Ferris says it is still possible that the orchestra could return this season, but those comments were undermined when PBT cut ties with its conductor over the weekend.

“Ballroom dancing has long been a political minefield. In the 1920s, dancing professionals tried to stamp out the ‘freakish’ steps of jazz-inspired crazes such as the Charleston and the Varsity Drag, which threatened to ‘turn the ballroom into a bear garden’. For the editor of the Dancing Times, excessive liberty on the dance floor had produced ‘artistic Bolshevism’. So the Official Board of Ballroom Dancing sanctioned only four official dances – waltz, foxtrot, quickstep and tango – and outlawed illegal steps, lifts and sidekicks.”