Category: dance

So Dance Theatre of Harlem’s financial woes are being blamed on inept management. “Inept management?” asks Tobi Tobias. “Mitchell, the NYCB’s first African-American principal dancer, conceived DTH to correct the virulent concept that blacks can’t do classical dancing, curtailed his own performing career to bring the company (and the school necessary to it) into being, and miraculously held these enterprises together for three and a half decades, leading the troupe to successive moments of glory and repeatedly getting it to rebound from near-death situations endemic to arts institutions.  You call that inept management?  I call it heroic achievement, and I think it should be acknowledged with admiration and gratitude—at the same time as the current grievous problems are being addressed.”

The Australian Ballet has posted its largest loss ever. “The ballet posted a $1 million loss for the calendar year 2003, nearly half of which was attributable to problems renting out space in its Australian Ballet Centre at Southbank.”

Dan Yonah Ben-Dror Marshall had a dream to open a community dance center in the Boston area. “With a lot of help from friends and family, he opened the Brookline Community Center for the Arts in Coolidge Corner early last year. With six studios, provisions for live music and performances, and about 100 teachers on board, he thought this one-stop shopping for dance would sell itself in no time. One year later, the center is struggling to stay afloat, and the dream could very well die on July 15.”

Houston throws a big dance festival but no ballet allowed. “The sheer number of choreographers surfacing at the Big Range Dance Festival suggests that a new fertile period has sprouted. But does Houston really have the chops to be a good modern-dance town? And how can it keep the momentum going this time around?”

“Like the top teachers who came before him — Stanley Williams, Maggie Black, David Howard — Wilhelm Burmann, who has presided over this particular 90-minute class for nearly 20 years, is easily the most revered New York ballet teacher of his era. That his class is packed with ballet stars who forgo company class in favor of his instruction is a testament to his remarkable ability to see the problem, be it a wobbly pirouette or a sagging ankle, and fix it. What you see in his class is raw, exposed dancing in which members of American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet and the Dance Theater of Harlem learn together, dance together and, most thrillingly, egg each other on.”

“Four of the five Cuban ballet dancers who defected in October during a 20-city tour of the United States are headed to jobs in Cincinnati this summer and fall. Cervilio Amador and Adiarys Almeida have been hired as soloists by the Cincinnati Ballet, a 31-member company with a $5 million operating budget. They are scheduled to dance the “Don Quixote” pas de deux on Oct. 8 and 9, almost a year to the day after they were to dance the same excerpt in Daytona Beach, Fla., as members of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba.”

Scottish Ballet has decided that the key to getting bigger audiences is to promote the personalities of its dancers. “The company is looking at sponsorship, fashion shoots, websites and media interviews as just some of the ways to boost the dancers’ profiles and build up a fan base around individuals.”

“Dance Theater of Harlem, the groundbreaking black ballet company founded 35 years ago, may disband its 44-member troupe if it fails to come up with $2.5 million to stanch its losses by the end June, Arthur Mitchell, the group’s founder, said yesterday. The company intends to continue its school, which serves 800 to 1,000 students, Mr. Mitchell said.”

Pennsylvania Ballet has spent much of the past decade rebuilding its fortunes after getting into money problems. How successful the company has been is evidenced by the fact that the company has landed Christopher Wheeldon, one of the hottest young choreographers around, to produce a new “Swan Lake” for the company.

American Ballet Theatre has a new full-length – a Raymonda. “ABT, however, partly through its mistaken desire to keep things zipping along, has not only left the story and its underlying theme unclear, it has also conceived and directed the heroine as a blank and Abderakhman as a ludicrously exotic idiot who represents neither serious sexual appeal nor serious threat.  You sit there muttering pitiably to yourself (or to the young woman sitting next to you, who has kindly plied you with much-needed cough drops), What is going on?”