Category: dance

“Nutcracker” has been a staple of City Ballet’s winter season for half a century now. For the stagehands, that’s 50 years of exploding the Stahlbaums’ living room in all directions; of hoisting the Christmas tree from a trap beneath the stage – higher, higher – until it has grown to mammoth proportions; of dropping a blizzard of white confetti on the leaping Snowflakes from the flies overhead. And then sweeping it up.”

Peter Boal may have George Balanchine to thank for his new job as artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. While Boal has never led a company before, he is known for his devotion to the choreographer, which meshes well with PNB’s tradition. “One of the things that attracted Boal to PNB was its strong commitment to Balanchine. His ballets constitute about a third of its repertory, the largest commitment of a major company outside New York City Ballet.”

Pacific Northwest Ballet has named Peter Boal as its new artistic director. “The 39-year-old principal dancer with New York City Ballet will take over the company on July 1. PNB had announced Boal was its “lead candidate” for the job early last month. Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, who have led the company since 1977, are retiring at the end of the current season.”

For 20 years, the Alvin Ailey Company’s second home has been Kansas City. “Mr. Ailey saw Kansas City as a great environment for his ideas of bringing dance back to the people. He loved the whole communal part of it, he loved those lecture-demonstrations all over the city and the master classes, and he went to them.”

Former New York City Ballet dancer Ib Andersen now leads the nine-member Arizona Ballet. On recreating Balanchine’s work: “I teach the steps and I teach what I think his intent was.  It’s what I think he intended, which is of course not [necessarily] what he intended.  And, like everyone else who stages Balanchine’s ballets, I put something of myself into it—because what else can you do?”

The impact of a ballet company’s closure can be difficult to measure, but when the holiday season rolls around, it isn’t hard to quantify the loss. “Thousands of children who live in the East Bay from Livermore, Pleasanton, Concord, Fremont, Richmond and most of all, Oakland, have come to the Paramount Theater on Broadway for at least 30 years to get their first taste of a live ballet performance. [But] until there is an Oakland Ballet Company there can’t be an Oakland Nutcracker… Sorry, Virginia, but the world is full of disappointments.”

Cuba has become the breeding ground for some of the world’s best young dancers. How could a poor, blockaded island of 11 million people do this? It cannot just be political engineering…

A whole new Nutcracker is not exactly what Boston Ballet was hoping to mount this holiday season. But when the city’s Wang Center booted its longtime December tenant in favor of a touring show with better special effects, the company was forced to reinvent its holiday staple in a new space, with less room to maneuver, smaller audiences, and a smaller budget to match. The result will be a Nutcracker that Boston audiences won’t recognize: “About 40 costumes have been redesigned… The company is using, for the first time, an extensive network of computer-programmed sets of moving and LED lights for a different look,” and new scenery aims to make the best use of the space.

Recent stories have told of job cuts at dance companies and generally tough finances. So is the dance world shrinking (again)? With data available from seven of America’s twelve largest companies, “Dance/USA found that in fiscal year 2000 these companies employed a total of 417 full-time dancers and apprentices. In fiscal year 2003, the same seven companies reported 480 full-time dancers and apprentices.”

“Dance is most clearly preserved in the living bodies of dancers, not in books or on films or videotapes. Even before Balanchine’s death in 1983, there was apprehension about preserving his works. Twenty-one years later, some critics swear that they are still performed as he would have liked; others find fault on a regular basis, saying that the New York City Ballet, the logical caretaker of his legacy, has not lived up to its responsibility, and look to other artistic directors and companies to preserve the work. Pacific Northwest Ballet co-director Francia Russell is one often looked to in this regard.”