Category: dance

William Forsythe is “winding up probably the most controversial, certainly the most innovative, ballet company of our era with a triumphal world tour to rub the Frankfurters’ noses in their parochialism: New York, Paris and, next week, London.” So what’s next? It’s off to the slums of Rio for inspiration…

“The Ballet Nacional de Cuba has announced the cancellation of “Les Sylphides,” a 1907 ballet by Michel Fokine that was to be performed at City Center next week and on its national tour, in response to an accusation of copyright infringement by the Fokine Estate in London. American Ballet Theater owns the exclusive rights to the ballet in New York through September 2005.”

A bizarre situation is unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina, where a newly formed ballet company has folded unexpectedly, and its CEO has apparently skipped town, leaving unpaid bills and furious dancers and musicians in his wake. The Atlantic Southeast Ballet Company was founded 18 months ago, but performed only once in September 2003 before a financial crisis began to rear its head. “About noon Wednesday, Gordon Crowder, the artistic director and CEO of the nonprofit ballet company, left a message on the answering machine of the ballet orchestra’s conductor. The message said Crowder and his wife, Susanne Crowder-Puerschel, who is associate director of the ballet, ‘have no money and have gone on a little vacation.'”

As choreographer William Forsyth contemplates moving on from the Ballett Frankfurt, he says his priorities in dance have changed. “He is interested in subtler, more inward kinds of movement in dancing that is more ‘behavioural’ than display, in dance that requires new arenas and new ways of working. He wants the freedom to work outside theatres, in smaller, more versatile spaces. ‘Theatres are inherently ideological. It’s us – the dancers – and them, the public. What about finding other ways of being together’?”

The Bolshoi Ballet says it will not bow to pressure to rehire a ballerina fired last month for being “too big.” “The labour ministry said the dismissal was illegal and she should be given her job back. ‘The Bolshoi Theatre has not changed its decision with regard to Anastasia Volochkova’.”

The Oakland Ballet has postponed its second program of the season, citing financial difficulties.

Christopher Stowell, who has taken over as artistic director of Oregon Ballet Theatre, is putting the “ballet” back in the company. Not that it was ever really missing, of course, it was just offstage…

Choreographer William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt is to be dissolved next year. “The dissolution of Ballett Frankfurt is of great consequence to the dance world. Over two decades, Forsythe transformed this company into one of the most consequential contemporary ballet ensembles in the world, creating dances out of a profound body of deeply ingrained physical knowledge. Choreographers need their tools – dancers – and the best tools are those who have been honed into perfect form for the work at hand.”

The musicians of Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley have filed a grievance against their management, which had planned to replace them with a recorded version of Copland’s Appalachian Spring in an upcoming performance. The company insists that the substitution was necessary to keep the organization from spiralling further into debt. “Pending the completion of an audit, the ballet’s deficit for the fiscal year that ended June 30 was just under $1.27 million.”

The largest non-curated dance festival in North America is in danger of shutting down. The fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists (fFIDA), which runs for two weeks every August, says that it needs to raise $20,000 by the end of October in order to avoid bankruptcy. Funding cuts and poorer-than-expected revenues at this summer’s fFIDA led to the cash crunch, which organizers are trying to alleviate with an e-mail campaign asking for 1,000 individuals to donate $20 apiece. So far, the campaign has raised $2000.