Category: dance

Rachel Moore has been named the new executive director of American Ballet Theatre. “Moore arrives at a time when there has been high turnover among the company’s executive directors and questions have been raised by former trustees about the company’s financial health. Ballet Theater’s auditor and company officials say the company is in good shape. This week, the company announced three new corporate sponsors and a challenge grant of $400,000.”

Scottish Ballet is making another bid to relocate to Tramway. “The ballet company, which has wanted to leave its home in Glasgow’s west end for many years, withdrew its bid for some £3.5m of funds in January. However, the ballet believes the Tramway site, in the city’s south side and owned by the city council, is still the best option for a new home and is expected to reapply for funds in October.”

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center recently canceled New York City Ballet’s 36-year annual residency. Now Saratoga wants to invite the company back – but not until 2007. Saratoga reportedly “lost about $900,000 each of the last two seasons even with ticket income of about $1.25 million. The SPAC board had considered inviting the ballet back in the future even before voting to cancel its annual residency.”

The Bolshoi Ballet is one of the world’s great, storied companies. But it has had some rough years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The current company is only emerging from years of internal crisis which ended in the firing of Yuri Grigorovitch who dominated everyone and everything for thirty years. It was also around this time that the Bolshoi lost several of its big stars, including Irek Mukhamedov, who joined the Royal Ballet in 1990. The great dancer Vladimir Vasiliev, better remembered for his interpretation of Spartacus than for reshaping the direction of the lacklustre troupe, took on a thankless task, to be replaced three years ago by the celebrated teacher, Boris Akimov.”

New York City Ballet’s production of Sleeping Beauty is an example of the structures and hierarchies of classical ballet. “Classical ballet itself, in its training methodology and in the operation of the institutions that make it possible at its highest level of evolution, depends upon hierarchy—upon systematic development and the ordering of greater and lesser into a strong, self-confident whole. Today’s audiences finds the neophytes—the bevy of diminutive Garland Dance girls in their floppy pink skirts—irresistibly cute, and indeed they are.  I just wish the same viewers would take a moment to think about what these very young children represent—how poignant their commitment to their goal is in a world that now scorns the restrictions necessary to hierarchal order, how fragile and unpredictable the artistic future of each child is, and how necessary they all are to the continuity of their art form.”

“After nearly half a century of defections, including 20 in 2003, Cuban dancers and teachers are exerting a powerful influence on American and world dance that brings to mind the profound impact Russian dancers brought to the West as their defections mounted in the dusk of the Soviet empire.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov is on another tour. But his aging body isn’t keeping up. “In brief, he sells tickets on his reputation and performs whatever he’s commissioned from contemporary dance-makers, slight though the result might be. But how much can a choreographer ask of a vintage instrument in a fragile condition? Fit though Baryshnikov is, he has endured knee surgery many times. For his European tour, he’s had to abandon a tricky solo…”

Isadora Duncan changed ballet with her unusual personal style. “Duncan has gone down in history as a hard act to follow – a one-off original who, from mixed motives of exhibitionism and evangelicalism, believed she could change the world. She was born in California in 1877 and raised by her mother in a very West Coast bohemian style.”

In only 20 years, Seoul’s Universal Ballet has become a company with which to reckon. “Many people still associate the company with its founder, Rev. Moon Sun Myung of Unification Church. But over the years, UBC has substantially shed the image of its ties to the religious group through its quality performances and contribution to Korea’s ballet development. ‘Year after year, we put on repertoires that were deemed above our capacity, which speeded up our growth. We also had a lot of influence from our series of foreign teachers, not only with dance but the whole production, including stage arts, lighting and costume design, because ballet is a composite art’.”

Robert Gottlieb is getting downright cranky about New York City Ballet’s Balanchine celebration: “If only we could blame the erosion of the Balanchine repertory on these injuries, but for the most part, the girls who are still on their toes are having their troubles, too: They either aren’t ballerina material to begin with, or they’re not being helped to understand the ballets they’re appearing in.”