Category: dance

London’s Royal Ballet has to sell tickets. So it produces mostly programs of full-length ballets. “Since the death of Kenneth MacMillan, the company has not had a resident choreographer, nor a candidate fit for the role, in itself a failing. Instead, bought-in goods, some wonderful, some frightful, papered over the chasms in artistic policy.” This month the company shows off some shorter works…

New York City Ballet’s 100th season is underway. “How Balanchine is performed is the central issue at City Ballet, and for years now the record has been worse than spotty. Last season, things were looking up—when they weren’t looking grim. Gala night perfectly symbolized both the ups and the downs. Some of the self-congratulation was justified—there were times when the spirit of Mr. B did come through—but there was trouble, too; Bugaku, one of Balanchine’s most singular ballets, which has been lingering on the endangered-species list, may actually now be extinct.”

There is a big shortage of mid-size dance theatres in New York. “The Joyce seeks to place dance at the front and center of the debate over how to redevelop Lower Manhattan, and central issue is space; that New York’s dance card is full this year only underscores the demand for it. What is needed, dance producers and company directors say, is a midsize-to-large dance theater (1,000 to 2,200 seats) with stages big enough to accommodate large companies with productions — classics like “Swan Lake,” for example — that require more scenery than a backdrop and a few props.”

Reinstated Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova says she won’t accept lesser roles now that she’s been rehired by the Bolshoi Ballet. “She has objected to comments by the Russian culture minister that she should take any ‘fourth swan’ role she is given after winning back her job. She said: ‘I have played the leading role in nearly every classical ballet’.”

The Rambert Dance Company looks better than it has in years. “Rambert’s dancers, always good, are taking possession of their repertoire in a way they haven’t dared for years. A spirit of inquiry has replaced their iron discipline, freeing each one to be a soloist. Even when they dance en masse they’re thinking for themselves. A company for choreographers to love.”

Nutcracker might be one of the most popular ballets, but when it was first presented, it didn’t fare well. “The reviews that stuck to it are the really bad reviews. That’s because the really bad reviews say, “This is not even a ballet,” and “If the Imperial theater keeps doing shows like this it will go downhill.” We will all go to hell in a handcart, in other words. And also that Tchaikovsky’s music was not danceable – they said that about it.”

Royal Ballet star Sylvie Guillem has “put most of the classical tutu ballets behind her, declaring that she has lost interest in The Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadère and the like. With her tall, idiosyncratically limber body and restless nature, she has spent much of her glittering career yearning for new choreographers to use her. With Maliphant, it looks as if she is finally getting something special – and yet the unthinkable is looming. Her contract expires this year. Talks have yet to be held in Covent Garden about this potentially momentous event, and Guillem’s mobile face clouds doubtfully.”

Tobi Tobias got to understand over the years of watching Balanchine work that “how to bow, how to faint, how to waltz” were crucially important skills for his dancers to understand. “I came to understand that these skills were as important to the choreographer as a breathtaking mastery of the classical dance vocabulary he did so much to advance. I think it disturbed him at the core when dancers (even child dancers, because they represented his art’s future) couldn’t execute convincingly the moves that any citizen of civilization can perform almost instinctively…”

Anastasia Volochkova, the glamorous ballerina fired by the Bolshoi on the grounds that she was too heavy, says a court ruling that would reinstate her to the company is proper vindication. “I’ve had to endure much in all these legal processes, but on the other hand it shows that in our country there’s a law that defends the rights of performers.”

Russian ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, who was fired in September for being “too big,” has won her case in court appealing the dismissal. “The court ruled that she was illegally dismissed and ordered the Bolshoi to pay the equivalent of $6,400 in damages. The Bolshoi’s lawyer said the Theatre would appeal the court’s decision.”