Category: dance

In the “snail-paced, under-funded world of dance”, the launch of the new Place dance prize choreographic competition has been big news. It was originally the brainchild of John Ashford, director of the Place in London, who for years has been plotting to organise a high-profile prize for the art form. It wasn’t just the cash he was after – ‘though dance is still the Cinderella art form and always needs new money’ – but the recognition.”

Royal Ballet star Silvie Guillem is almost 40. She’s “difficult, it is said, known for being arrogant and argumentative. She stormed out of the Paris Opera following fights with Rudolf Nureyev and took off for the Royal Ballet, where she had more rows, this time with Kenneth MacMillan. She said no to an amazing number of parts and, even where she said yes, she refused to do them in the usual ways or wearing the costumes that other people provided.”

A principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater has been placed on medical leave and will not perform at all during ABT’s fall season. Nina Ananiashvili, who hails from Tbilisi, Georgia, will reportedly return in the spring, but the company isn’t disclosing the nature of her illness or injury.

Where are the women choreographers? “Is it possible that in an art form driven by feminine ideals, women haven’t made nearly the gains of their sisters in business and politics? If Cinderella wants to be a choreographer, is she more likely to encounter a glass ceiling than a glass slipper?”

In the dance industry, where careers can be made or broken before the performers finish high school, and in which a freak injury or simple old age (defined as “older than 30”) can doom even the most talented individual, the competition to be “discovered” is intense and sometimes psychologicaly damaging. Sylviane Gold spent the summer following one 14-year-old hopeful through physical agony, teenage mind games, and ultimately, the triumph of a dancer’s spirit.

A Zimbabwean dance crew – The Neighbourhood Crew – has set a world record for the longest dance party after dancing non-stop for 56 hours – nearly four hours longer than the current record of 52 hours and three minutes. “The group of about 57 youths took to the dance floor last Thursday hoping to dance non-stop for 100 hours, but had to settle for the 56 hours when fatigue finally caught up with them on Sunday morning.”

Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart tries some theatrical takes on the composer – in this case, Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. “The dance language of de Keersmaeker’s piece, which is severely limited, ranges from shards of classical ballet that appear warped in their execution—inadvertently, I believe, for lack of expertise in that department—to motions suggesting jungle animals, as if to imply that human passions, even when sung about with infinite delicacy and sophistication as they are in Mozart, have to do with the primal and the wild.”

“You thought burlesque was a thing of the past? It ain’t so. That old bump-and-grind — tasseled pasties, unsubtle comedy and all — has made a comeback in the past few years. A growing number of restaurants and bars in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn regularly feature late-night performers reviving and reinventing the genre, which had its heyday in the 1930s and ’40s. A new generation of audiences, from 20- something singles to couples marking their two-digit anniversaries, are discovering its comic and risque appeal.”

The National Ballet of Canada is looking for money to ease its transition into a new theate three years from now. “The opera and the ballet companies had been equal partners in the previous attempt to build an opera/ballet house — the $311 million Moishe Safdie folly that was cancelled in 1990. This time around, the ballet company decided the stakes were too high, and it preferred to invest its money in improving the company and creating new work rather than putting up its limited available dollars into bricks and mortar.That’s how the ballet company wound up being the chief tenant rather than co-owner of the new performing arts centre.”

This year’s fFIDA International Dance Festival in Toronto featured 75 choroeographers. “The most startling aspect about this year’s fFIDA was the presence of men. In fact. there were probably more real live, honest to goodness male dancers on stage than in all the previous 13 years combined. Humour made a welcome return, even to the point of bizarre, and surprisingly, solos, usually the fFIDA mainstay, were almost equally matched by duets and ensembles. Angst-ridden, navel-gazing choreographies were on the wane, while abstract, philosophical and/or cerebral subjects reflect a new trend.”