Category: dance

New York City Ballet is, like every other dance company on Earth, marking George Balanchine’s centenary with a series of special performances highlighting the master’s work. Unfortunately, says Robert Gottlieb, City Ballet chose to cast a decidedly washed-up ballerina in two of Balanchine’s most beloved roles, and to allow “echt Broadway” star Susan Stroman to stumble through “a two-and-a-half-hour piece with barely a step in it beyond the most rudimentary. There’s so little dance content, you can hardly even call it pastiche; it’s a show, it’s a hit, but it’s not a ballet.”

Flamenco is many different things to different people. ‘Classic’ flamenco, “created by marginalised gypsies in rural Andalusia two or more centuries ago, and still sung in southern Spain by old-timers,” is only peripherally related to the jazzy, pop-influenced dance craze which is even now enjoying a comeback all across Europe. Most of the youngsters dancing the night away to the latter are probably completely unaware of the former, and some purists are concerned that the gypsy history of the original flamenco may soon be lost.

The Scottish Ballet has backed off its plans to convert a popular Glasgow visual arts space into its new headquarters, in the face of mounting criticism from the city’s other arts leaders. When concerns were initially voiced about the ballet’s plans to convert the Tramway building to office space, the company revised its plans in an effort to be responsive, but the criticism continued, leading to the decision to scrap the whole enterprise. The ballet has also withdrawn its application for federal funds to help with the conversion, and says it is going back to the drawing board.

An important hurdle has been cleared in the city of Frankfurt’s efforts to bring a new, private ballet company to the city. The public company directed by William Forsythe, which has performed in Frankfurt for years, “will be shut down by the end of the 2003/2004 season because of budgetary constraints. To continue to bring Forsythe premieres to Frankfurt, the renowned choreographer wants to found a private ballet company which would perform its productions in both Frankfurt and Dresden.” City politics have proved quite an obstacle to the plan, but last week, Frankfurt’s mayor, and the head of the city’s cultural bureau declared themselves on board.

“According to Dance/USA, a Washington, D.C.-based national service organization, 60% of the large dance companies it surveyed finished 2002 with their budgets in the red — the most in at least a dozen years. Anecdotal evidence, the group said, suggests that 2003 wasn’t any better, and that 2004 looks grim too.” Dance has always been a tough sell to general audiences, and the hit that many troupes took in annual donations during the recession hasn’t abated with the current predictions of economic recovery. As more and more companies are forced to the precipice of insolvency, the dance world is realizing just how small its pool of supporters really is.

America’s ballet scene has never exactly been bursting at the seams with homegrown talent. Indeed, compared with European countries, as well as with the former Soviet Union, the U.S. simply has no serious tradition of intensive dance training for talented young students. Ballet schools abound in the U.S. but few approach the level of the state-sponsored academies overseas. Now, the American Ballet Theater, which has traditionally filled its company with the best talent it can poach from other countries, is starting what it hopes will become America’s definitive school of classical dance.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is a decided anomaly in an age when dance companies nationwide are struggling for survival. Financially secure, well-managed, and respected worldwide, Ailey is preparing to move into a new, 77,000-square-foot home in midtown Manhattan, a testament to the company’s ability to succeed in the hyper-competitive world of New York culture. No one element is responsible for the Ailey’s phenomenal success, but a combination of sound management ideas, diverse artistic goals, and a constant and unwavering eye on the newest trends of the dance world has made the company a dominant force in the industry.

Boston Ballet, searching desperately for a new home for its annual production of The Nutcracker since being kicked out of the Wang Center in favor of a touring Radio City Christmas show, may have found more than just a holiday staging ground. If things go the company’s way, the city’s Hynes Convention Center could be renovated into a performing arts center, and Boston Ballet could take up permanent residence there. Of course, the company doesn’t own Hynes, and hasn’t yet spoken to the city of Boston about the plan, and any renovation would take years to complete, but what the heck? It never hurts to dream.

James Sewell is “no stranger to the city, but few New Yorkers have been able to watch him develop, at 43, into one of American ballet’s most inventive choreographers. A leading dancer in Eliot Feld’s company in the 1980’s, he founded his dance troupe in New York in 1990, but then moved it to his hometown, Minneapolis, in 1993.”

There are celebrations all over America this year in honor of George Balanchine’s 100th birthday. “All this is for the man who transformed ballet as surely as Pablo Picasso did painting or Balanchine’s collaborator, Igor Stravinsky, did music. Balanchine made an Old World art form new by dropping the frills and pantomime. He was about pure dance. Ballet did not have to tell a story: “When you have a garden of pretty flowers, you don’t demand of them, ‘What do you mean?’ ” he said.”