Category: dance

From an artistic standpoint, most observers agree that Scottish Ballet has never been in better shape, and a return to the international festival circuit is in the offing. But fiscally, the company is in the same sinking boat as nearly every other Scottish performing arts organization, and ballet administrators are getting frustrated with the Scottish Executive’s seeming unwillingess to make the arts a priority.

Merce Cunningham is old, and there’s no getting around that fact. At 86 years old, he is a physical shadow of his former self, unable to dance or even walk without a lot of assistance. “But if his body no longer wishes to do his bidding, his mind continues to inspire people who rightly regard him as the enemy of cliché and the champion of difference. The fact that one of America’s greatest universities has mounted its largest-ever interdisciplinary arts project under the title Encounter Merce bears eloquent witness to the potency of his influence… And who better to embody creativity in the arts than a man whose entire career has been devoted to taking the path less travelled by?”

Choreographer/director Matthew Bourne has a new dance on display at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, but he might object to that description. Specifically, Bourne insists that Play Without Words is not dance, but theatre. “Mr. Bourne and his allies insist on a distinction between abstract dance and narrative dance, which they barely see as dance at all. For Mr. Bourne, as quoted in The New York Times, ‘I’ve always been excited by the strangeness of ballet, but I can’t bear it when people just come forward and do a turn in the air for no reason.'”

Boston Ballet’s 2005-06 season will be daring, with half the scheduled performances being of works the company has never performed before, and a world premiere by Mark Morris as the centerpiece. Guest choreographer Jorma Elo, who has a long history with the company, will also provide a brand new interpretation of Bizet’s Carmen.

Washington Ballet’s new dancers’ union has filed a complaint against the company. “AGMA last week told the National Labor Relations Board in a formal “charge against employer” that the ballet company had informed guild members Nikkia Parish and Brian Corman that they would be terminated. AGMA claims the termination is in retaliation for the dancers’ “support and activities” on AGMA’s behalf and for their testimony in favor of the union at a January NLRB hearing to determine an appropriate bargaining unit for the company’s dancers.”

John Rockwell explores the Riverdance phenomenon. “It’s easy to be sniffy about the “Riverdance” experience. I’ve been sniffy myself. But it is what it is, and what it is is Las Vegas-style entertainment. As such it’s far more popular than most dance. Which makes people scornful and envious. They even go so far as to deny that this is dance at all, which is silly. “Riverdance” goes out of its way to demonstrate connections between other forms of heel-and-toe-tapping folk dance, like flamenco and tap. And some of the dancing is pretty spectacular.”

The Sydney Dance Company is on the verge of insolvency, and the company is fighting to save the jobs of half its dancers. The current deficit is more than $600,000 on an annual budget of only $1.56 million. “Unless new funding arrangements are secured in the next two weeks, its board will have to decide whether the company can continue.”

How to represent your favorite Royal in art? Danish choreographer Peter Schaufuss has chosen ballet for “Diana the Princess.” “This is Diana as she would have liked to be remembered: dashing around for an hour and a half in a tight white catsuit. On every hand, there are men and women literally dancing attendance upon her: Beefeaters, aids patients, paparazzi—the usual crowd. Also present are Her Majesty the Queen and her close family.”

“When the historically pivotal Islington theatre was rebuilt with a Lottery grant of £30 million, there was much sneering at “ballet” getting “people’s money”. Seven years on, and Sadler’s Wells is now the most virtuous theatre in London. It manages to be both local and international. Now a new stage begins. This week Sadler’s Wells’s chief executive Alastair Spalding announced a risky new development – risky because it challenges the theatre’s knife-edge finances.”

African choreographers are inventing new forms of dance, but no one seems to be sure what to call them. “African dance is, by nature and tradition, both multidimensional and heterogenous. To suggest that choreographers should stay within the boundaries of some preconceived national dance expression is relativistic; to describe their work as derivative of American or European modern dance choreographers is elitist.”