Category: dance

Dancers face more physical challenges than athletes. So in 2001 New York City Ballet formed a wellness team to work with its dancers. “From 2000 to 2003, the number of major workers’ compensation claims made by City Ballet dancers fell 24 percent, to 29, and the weeks of disability logged by company dancers fell 46 percent, to 231. The number of ballets performed in a season and the intensity of the company’s touring schedule can affect injury levels, but since the wellness program began, costs have gone down.”

Colorado Ballet has been fighting deficits the past few years. But its move into Denver’s new Ellie Caulkins Opera House has caused a spike in ticket sales and subscriptions. The new flush of cash seems to have solved the company’s money woes for now.

London’s “Royal Ballet is about to open its new season with a work about a psychopathic dance teacher who abuses, rapes and kills his pupils which has been deemed too shocking and gruesome to be performed at matinees.”

Sampler programs at low ticket cost have become a popular way of showcasing dance seasons. They’re “part of a national and international effort to attract new audiences for dance and other commercially fragile art forms. Some of these gimmicks cheapen their art; it’s hard to argue that samplers do that.” But do they create more excitement (and audiences) for the rest of the season, or do they steal those audiences (and funding) from the main courses?

William Forsythe’s new company looks a lot like his old Ballett Frankfurt. “At first, watching Forsythe’s 18 dancers, it is not particularly evident what has changed. They are still based, like the old company, in the studios of Frankfurt’s Opernhaus, and as they wait to begin work, swigging water and easing soreness out of their muscles, they look like any bunch of dancers, anywhere in the world. Slowly, however, it becomes evident that this new ensemble possesses a very singular dynamic.”

Thanks to a couple of generous patrons, Ballet Austin is getting a new home. “Designed by the Bommarito Group, the Butler Dance Education Center will feature seven dance studios, including the Austin Ventures Studio/Theatre, a flexible performance space with 270 seats. Plans call for it to open in January 2007. Ballet Austin officials said the new building will allow them to increase the number and types of programs and performances that they present, as well as contribute to downtown development.”

Latin America. “Nearly half of the principal dancers at Ballet Theater and at the Boston Ballet are from Latin America or Spain. Four of the 12 foreign dancers at the New York City Ballet are from Latin America or Spain; one is from Puerto Rico. Principal dancers from Latin America and Spain now outnumber those from former Soviet-bloc countries at the Boston Ballet and the Royal Ballet, and are neck and neck at the San Francisco Ballet. At the Washington Ballet almost 20 percent of the dancers are from Latin America or Puerto Rico.”

Choreographer Bill T. Jones seemingly exists to make people angry, and some in the dance world believe that Jones’s sort of controversy is exactly the sort of visceral content the genre needs to engage a public distracted by the juggernaut of pop culture. “Mr. Jones has carried himself through the rarefied world of dance with an air of enlivened majesty: speaking out, speaking often and, when speaking of himself, occasionally speaking in the third person. His comportment may partly explain why, during his more than 25-year career, his creative efforts have repeatedly been considered transgressive. But that term mischaracterizes him as an artist and perhaps even as a man, a point rendered clearly in this newest work.”

“Rather than proceed with a National Labor Relations Board hearing, the Washington Ballet has settled a discrimination complaint with the union representing its dancers, bringing to a close an episode that shone an unflattering light on the inner workings of the institution. The American Guild of Musical Artists had alleged that Artistic Director Septime Webre had illegally dismissed two dancers in retaliation for their efforts enabling AGMA to represent the dancers. The ballet maintained that the two were let go for artistic reasons. One dancer, Brian Corman, was rehired after AGMA filed its complaint… Nikkia Parish, the other dancer in the case, has not been rehired.”

The Rambert Dance Company intends to build a new £16.5 million headquarters on London’s South Bank. “The new centre – which the company hope will be finished in 2008 – will house state-of-the-art studios, along with community and education spaces. The contemporary dance company is currently located in cramped premises in Chiswick, west London.”