Category: dance

“Silicon Valley electronics retailer John Fry has stepped in to rescue the financially battered Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley with a $1 million contribution and an extraordinary commitment to take over the board chairmanship. The gift is the largest single contribution in the ballet’s history and comes after a recent audit showed its deficit hovering at $1.5 million… The $1 million check was hand-delivered by Fry late Wednesday. According to [company CEO Charles] Hart, the ballet began writing checks to its creditors Thursday.”

The Paul Taylor Company opens its new season in New York, and the company looks reborn, writes Tobi Tobias. They are “dancing as if an ardent, intensified study of echt Taylor style had reanimated it.”

Akiva Talmi claims that the press agent he trained has stolen the ballet company in tiny Pittsfield, Mass that he spent 30 years building. Now there’s the matter of the 75-city tour and the presenters that are confused…

The recent decision by the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) to end its long association with New York City Ballet sparked much controversy in upstate New York, with everyone from SPAC subscribers to politicians questioning the direction the current board is taking the center. But board members insist that their decision to end City Ballet’s 3-week annual residency was based on long-term problems of cost and attendance which appeared to have no other solution. Even an infusion of cash from the state would likely not be enough to solve the cash-flow problem, and while SPAC’s board is reconsidering its decision, there seems to be a case to be made for the center’s dance needs to be filled by smaller, less expensive companies.

Why is Mikhail Baryshnikov working on so many projects? “Just about everything he does professionally — including disbanding his White Oak Dance Project after more than a dozen years and taking a non-dancing role in the TV series “Sex and the City” — is intended to support his visionary Baryshnikov Arts Center, located in the top half of the new six-story W. 37th Arts complex in New York. Scheduled to open this fall, the complex houses three off-Broadway-style theaters (one of which Baryshnikov plans to acquire by 2006) and, above them, studio, conference and office spaces that he already owns and intends to use to make New York City more art-friendly for young people.”

The Bolshoi Ballet is one of the most tradition-bound of arts institutions. But there are signs the Bolshoi is loosening up, willing to experiment. “What has changed is that the Bolshoi has abandoned its preconceived notions of what is right for it, the idea that certain styles – even if artistically meritorious – are best left to other theaters. Now anything is fair game at the Bolshoi, at least if it takes place on the New Stage.”

Bolshoi star ballerina Nina Ananiashvili is 40. “The ballerina Tatiana Terekhova told me once, `Nina, after 35 years old you will be dancing much more easily, you will really enjoy your dancing.’ And I thought, `Ah no, it’s impossible, after 35 I will be really tired.’ Now I think she was right, because now I know on stage I can control everything. I am really secure. I enjoy every moment, because time has gone so quickly and I have this feeling that I haven’t danced my best ballet yet. Choreographers haven’t used my possibilities as I still hope. Sometimes when I see young dancers I think, `My God, why don’t they jump?’ It’s amazing – I’m jumping better than them!”

Twyla Tharp didn’t have to spend much time convincing Billy Joel to let her use his music for an evening-long show. “It was like archeology. I treated the songs as shards, pieces of pots that had been pulled out of the ground, and I had to reconstruct the whole pot. My other concept was something called living newspapers. It was a short-lived form of American theater — Orson Welles, among others, practiced it. They took subject matter like electricity, water, labor, and bulked dramatic evenings out of these concepts, and I had the feeling that I would do this with the conflict of war.”

“Since Balanchine’s death in 1983, the company he founded has been run by Peter Martins, the former star who has been responsible for teaching a new generation of dancers the works of one of the 20th century’s greatest innovators. Beloved as he was onstage, Martins’s backstage role has made him a lightning rod for blame. Throughout his tenure, critics have complained that the Balanchine repertoire has faded, has lost its vitality. When the vibrancy of a performance appears to dim, it’s not as easy to renew as colors on silk and tulle.”

Since dance critic Octavio Roca left the San Francisco Chronicle a few months ago, the newspaper hasn’t had a staff dance critic. And it currently has no plans to hire one. This week one of the freelancers who’s been helping fill the beat raised an alarm on an online dance BB that the Chron was eliminating dance coverage altogether. Not so, writes Chron editor David Wiegand: We have no intention of cutting dance coverage. But “since Octavio left, I have received all of two letters about the fact we haven’t yet been authorized by the Hearst Corp. to hire a new dance critic. That’s rather sad, don’t you think?” Sounds like an invitation to me…