Category: dance

Another dance venture is about to fail in Hartford and Frank Rizzo enumerates reasons. “When Hartford gives up its magic-wand mentality – whereby simply by wishing for a company or building a theater (or a renovated downtown) – audiences will automatically come a’running, the healthier it will be. It has to understand audiences, nurture them, listen to them and adapt to them on their terms before there’s any long-term chance of succeeding.”

Call it selling out an art form, giving the people what they want, or simply adapting to a changing world. But whatever you call the new strategy being employed by the Columbus, Ohio-based BalletMet, which includes joint appearances with the Ohio State marching band and dances choreographed to the music of techno icon Moby, the company insists that the steps are necessary for them to stay solvent in a world that seems increasingly resistant to traditional dance.

Robert Gottleib is feeling weary of New York City Ballet’s Balanchine tribute. “There’s been so much spin and so much P.R. that it’s hard to remember just what it is we’re celebrating. But once you’ve blown out the party candles, what do you have? More of the recent unpredictable, uneven level of performance that was unthinkable during the 35 years when Balanchine commanded the company.”

Mark Morris essays a Sylvia, and it’s a serious ballet, writes Joan Acocella. “In its classicism, “Sylvia” could start a fashion. The big ballet companies are always crying out for three-act story ballets, because that’s what the public wants. And what they end up with, usually, is either some same-old revision of “Giselle” or “Swan Lake” (the San Francisco troupe has these) or the opposite, a new-style, lurid, hauling-the-girls-by-the-crotch melodrama (San Francisco also has one of these, Lar Lubovitch’s “Othello”). “Sylvia” could point a new way: both purely classical—a symbol, not a soap opera—and also serious.”

Last Christmas the Tacoma City Ballet almost lost the Tacoma Symphony as its pit orchestra for Nutcracker two days before performances were to begin over a dispute over broadcast on the city’s local TV channel. So when the company decided to expand its programming to include orchestral accompaniment for all of this season’s productions, it dropped the Tacoma Symphony and signed its crosstown rival – Northwest Sinfonietta.

“More and more, dance companies are turning to popular music — particularly rock ‘n’ roll — as a contemporary outlet for new work. Not that this is anything new. Ballet appears to be cutting to the quick in the drive to meet ticket-buyers at the turnstile. The collective reasoning is to attract new and younger audiences, and those who turned out for Joel and Springsteen ranged from teenagers to middle-aged fans.”

“Hip-hop is widely misrepresented as a recent indulgence of loud-mouthed, flashily jewelled, gun-toting black gangsters, whose attitude to women, work and the law leave something to be desired. This is a great shame, because hip-hop is far more properly read as an life-affirming manifestation of the inborn human desire to make entertainment even in abject misery.”

American Ballet Theatre’s new season gives a fair representation of the company’s heritage, writes Tobi Tobias. “Represented first and foremost was the idea of ABT as a custodian of what can loosely be called “the heritage”—classics from the nineteenth century and latter-day works explicitly declaring their adherence to that tradition.”

“A campaign to increase ticket sales for the New York City Ballet’s summer residency at The Saratoga Performing Arts Center appears to be paying off. As of May 9, SPAC had ticket orders totaling $511,464 for 17,240 tickets to the ballet, compared with $429,297 for 15,611 tickets through the same date last year.” The ticket sales initiative was undertaken after the SPAC board announced that the ballet would be booted from its schedule after this summer, then reversed course in the face of public criticism. SPAC’s other major summer tenant, the Philadelphia Orchestra, has not apparently benefitted from the sales push: orchestra sales are down from this time last year.

Steven Libman, whose 17 years at the helm of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater make him one of the longest-tenured dance executives in the U.S., is resigning from the company and will depart later this summer. Libman is credited with raising the PBT’s endowment to become the fourth-largest in the country among ballet troupes, but since 2001, the company has struggled, and several of Libman’s decisions have been questioned by members of the company and the public.