Category: dance

Peter Boal is taking on a big challenge as new director of Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. PNB has big financial challenges and the leadership team he replaces are long time institutions with the company.

Dancers at the Puerto Rican ballet troupe Ballet Concierto are on strike against the company. Monday they accused the company on Monday of trying to recruit replacements from American Ballet Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem.

So the traveling Rockettes booted Boston Ballet from its traditional home for the Nutcracker. But maybe that isn’t so bad. “Bring on the Rockettes. Competition makes everyone stronger. If the ballet has to retool its show to draw audiences, isn’t it likely to make it fresher and better? Beyond that, having to go up against everything from the Rockettes to ”The Lion King” to a hundred local ”Christmas Carol” productions may force the Ballet to think more deeply, more precisely, more artistically about just what its mission is.”

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre is known far and wide not only for the skill of its dancers, but for the fundraising acumen of its management and board. The company’s annual gala alone raised 11% of its annual budget last year, and this year’s event is expected to do at least as well. “The Ailey company’s success at raising funds is due in part to its special cachet. Ailey always insisted on having a multicultural group of dancers, even as his works celebrated his own African-American heritage. So the Ailey has always been both an ethnic institution and a colorblind one.”

The Moscow Ballet is in the midst of a massive 75-city tour featuring 100 dancers culled from Russia’s various professional troupes. A few bumps in the road are only to be expected during such a long tour, of course, but the Russians seem to be facing more than a couple of minor crises. “A disgruntled former director and performer, Valery Lantratov, has issued a couple of angry e-mails to the press complaining of ‘an unacceptable contract which infringed on the rights of the artists’ and ‘discontent with the marketing practices’ that included allegations of false advertising.”

Age is a cruel mistress in the dance world, and for Martine Lemy, principal ballerina of Canada’s National Ballet, a fortieth birthday spells the end of a career. “Just when she is feeling at her most healthy, both physically and emotionally, she is giving up her principal-dancer contract and leaving the company at the end of this season.” The issue isn’t whether she can still dance – she can – but for how long she can dance. Lemy had already taken herself out of the company’s longest productions due to decreasing stamina, “which makes her a financial liability to a cash-poor company.” She offered to come back for less money, but the company declined the offer.

“Five veteran performers — nearly one fourth of the troupe — are leaving Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and will not be on hand for Hubbard’s spring engagement. They are among the company’s best and brightest, and they’re leaving for a variety of reasons, some of them moving into other fields… The changes represent the most dramatic shift in troupe personnel since the arrival of Jim Vincent as artistic director in 2000.”

Forty-three members of the Cuban dance troupe Havana Night Club defected last week in Las Vegas. “The decision to defect didn’t come easily or suddenly, but it was almost unanimous – with just three of the dancers saying they may want to go back to Cuba. The reasons involve freedom and opportunity, but this mass defection also hinged on their close kinship as a troupe and a rebuff from the Cuban government.”

Tobi Tobias has never much cared for Pina Bausch’s work. But lately it seems to have gone from bad to worse. “I found most of the early work loathsome—hardly dancing, conceptually sophomoric, self-indulgent, and dull—but in retrospect I prefer it to Bausch’s mature-phase tactics.”

London’s Royal Ballet School is launching a dance inclusion programme which will reach less affluent children in four new centres around Britain. “To prove things are changing, the prestigious school, featured in Billy Elliot, has already selected two children from the East End of London to take up coveted places on its training scheme.”