Category: dance

Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet was thoroughly molded in the shape of its longtime directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell. Now they’ve retired and NYCity Ballet alum Peter Boal is taking over, how will the company change?

“I want lots of new choreography. I’m not going to do it myself because I want it to be good choreography. I want to see us perform more in Seattle. Not en masse, but in small groups; not at McCaw Hall, but elsewhere in town, maybe in collaboration with other institutions. I want everybody to see the company, invite everybody to come to the ballet; I want them to know it can be relevant to their lives. I want to reach out to the entire dance community. Four times this year, before particular rep programs, we’re going to be inviting dance students to come to watch a class at Phelps Center: We’re calling it ‘$5 Fridays.'”

A New York group has “commissioned five choreographers to present 5- to 10-minute works under stuntlike conditions: they were informed after midnight Sunday, by e-mail, of the performance’s location” – on the streets of New York. “They have until Saturday to come up with a dance.”

Choreographer Wayne McGregor has built a dance studio home on the Kenyan coast. “The prolific British choreographer, skinny and shaven-headed at 35, has founded a private domain. His slice of personal bliss is in a place called Lamu. Here McGregor has built the studio and accommodations for himself and the members of his Random Dance Company. His intention, however, is to make this splendid property available to artists of all kinds from around the globe.”

Three years ago Monica Mason took over an ailing Royal Ballet in London. “Since taking on the top job, she has made many improvements. She has calmed an unsettled company, helped an exciting and talented set of dancers to dance better, and made judicious and interesting choices in the repertoire she has revived.”

The financially troubled Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, which recently made waves with a decision to lay off its orchestra in favor of recorded music, has canceled five of the performances it was scheduled to give of The Nutcracker this holiday season. It was the second such announcement in only a few months: back in June, PBT announced it would cut Nutcracker back to 17 performances from the 23 it mounted last year. The ballet says that its holiday schedule has been hurt by the addition of the traveling Radio City Christmas Spectacular into Pittsburgh’s fall arts lineup, but members of the laid-off ballet orchestra suggest that the public may not be interested in attending a Nutcracker with canned instrumentals.

“This is how far dance has sunk in the American public’s estimation: By the time reality television executives got around to adding a dance competition to the mix of talent show-inspired programming, the market was already saturated with hopeful singers, models, starlets and fashion designers.” But shouldn’t the dance world take TV’s sudden interest in the art as a compliment? Um, no, says Gia Kourlas, not so long as the overarching point of the dance programs popping up in primetime is to laugh at incompetent celebrities who thought serious dance looked easy. “Dancing isn’t just about unearthing some inner, mysterious passion: dancing is hard. It serves as a magnifying glass, and no amount of slick talk or charm can hide the truth about your personality.”

“A truth must be faced before it’s too late: New York is no longer the capital of the contemporary-dance world. The point is not to declare a new capital – there isn’t one – but to recognize that there has been a shift in the power base since the formation of the European Union, where the creative landscapes in Amsterdam and Bucharest are just as vital as those brewing in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Vienna. If nothing else, the European Union has cultivated a network of artists with no perceptible center of bureaucratic power.”

The Latvian National Opera has been prohibited by the Sergei Prokoviev estate from performing its production of the composer’s ballet Cinderella after setting the classic children’s story in a brothel. “Prokofiev’s family feels very strongly that if you are going to present a new storyline, you should employ one of the many talented new composers to write new music for you.”

A few months ago, Nikkia Parish was a valued member of the prestigious Washington Ballet, and had managed to land a few featured roles in the company’s productions. These days, she is a bartender, having been dismissed for what the company says are “artistic reasons” after the spring season. Parish has a different view: she says she was fired for her union activism, and the National Labor Relations Board is looking into the charge. “Parish’s story is not only about labor issues. It’s about what a ballet company can demand of its dancers in the name of art. It’s also about ballet culture, where typically the artistic director takes the role of the feared father figure and the dancers are the cowed children, afraid to speak up, used to the futility of protesting the myriad personal slights levied at them under the guise of artistic prerogative.”