Category: dance

“Dancers are used to sell products and entertain visitors in a startling number of ways. There is work performing and choreographing on cruise ships, at theme parks, with live pop music acts, and for television, film and music videos. There’s even the more obscure world of “industrials” – conventions and conferences at which dance routines are used to market everything from computers to shoes. This is the world of commercial dance, which is generally distinct from the modern dance and ballet performances in a traditional theater space, known as “concert dance.” While plenty of little girls dream of becoming a prima ballerina, many others dream of being a Laker Girl. For a commercial dancer, the emphasis isn’t so much on the art of dance – it’s on the fun of it all.”

“A funny thing or two has happened to the original Frogs on its way to the present [at New York’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre]. It has grown increasingly politicized.  The creatures who give the play its title have evolved from a simple chorus of amphibians that serenades Dionysus on his disquieting ferryboat ride into today’s know nothing, say nothing, do nothing populace, lulled by leaders of dubious qualifications to okay “a war we shouldn’t even be in.”  The present version seems to fancy itself something of a left-leaning rabble-rouser, destined not to tour to the Red States. At the same time, the latter-day Frogs has become more theatrically ingenuous.”

“Unlike his contemporaries, the more showy and abstract Balanchine or the decorative Sir Frederick Ashton – whose centenary is also being marked globally this year – Anthony Tudor has been the subject of few revivals and even less academic study. He is a shadowy figure, forever dancing in the dark.”

“In a surprisingly entrepreneurial move, American ballet companies have recently begun allowing donors to sponsor individual dancers, for amounts that range from $2,500 to $100,000 a year. Some ballet companies even compile and distribute rosters, which look eerily like shopping lists, specifying their dancers’ ranks and prices.”

New York City Ballet sold five percent more tickets this summer during its summer residence in Saratoga. “But are those increased sales and a loss of $600,000 instead of $750,000 enough to maintain the ballet’s annual stay in Saratoga after next year — especially if some of that money could be one-shot contributions from people responding to efforts to ‘save the ballet’?”

Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet has narrowed its search for a new artistic director to six. Fifty candidates applied to replace Kent Stowell and Francia Russell.

Royal Ballet star Sylvie Guillem has cancelled her season at the Royal Opera House after suffering an ankle injury…

“Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre will have a wide-ranging new look next season. Artistic director Terrence Orr will increase the company’s size from 28 to 30 dancers, with six promotions from within. Ten new members will fill the corps de ballet and apprentice ranks to replace departing soloists.”

What keeps dance critics so passionate about an art that society increasingly views as expendable? Perhaps it’s their own importance in the struggle to keep the form alive. “Dance is more dependent on the musings of its critics than, say, poetry and music are on the writings of their critics. Unless you live in a culturally significant city, your chances of seeing a wide range of live dance (much less different casts of a single work) are slim… Even the most obscure post-minimalist or Renaissance composer is more likely to be culturally available—at least, satisfyingly enough on CD—than any well-established or even world famous choreographer.”

An old Soviet imagining of Prokofiev’s ballet version of Romeo & Juliet, as realized by Korea’s Universal Ballet and choreographer Oleg Vinogradov, is an interesting historical exercise, but not much of an artistic one, says Tobi Tobias. “If the dancing seems to have no impulse, no drive, no phrasing, it’s because the choreography doesn’t demand such things—indeed, appears to have no idea they exist. And the dancers haven’t been encouraged to make up for the deficiency. The music keeps issuing urgent reminders on the subject, but no one, apart from the audience, hears them.”