Category: dance

New York City Ballet travels to St. Petersburg to perform Balanchine at the Maryinsky. Th company is a hit. “The Maryinsky has been dancing Balanchine since the beginning of the 1990’s and never once could one have suspected that it can be like this.”

“Dancegoers who associate ballet with enchanted lakes and moonlit glades may be surprised to find choreographers fascinated by bars. Yet, over the years, several successful works have concerned bars, saloons, nightclubs or cafes.”

Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre is a big grand old historic theatre that has been the center of the universe for dance companies visiting the city. But recent management changes have many in the dance community fretting about what might happen to their piece of the performing world…

“New York is once again in a cycle of producing the most distinctive and enthralling contemporary dance in the world. Making a dance a conceptual event by creating a specific atmosphere that overcomes a conventional space, or by making the site itself the starting point, is the overriding theme.”

Tobi Tobias posed a question: “Some would say that dancing is the cruelest profession, all but guaranteeing grueling work, physical pain, poverty, and heartbreak. Yet the field has always been rich in aspirants willing to dedicate their lives to the art. Why?” Among those taking up the challenge of an answer are Mindy Aloff, Lila York and Maina Gielgud…

A startling new approach to a most familiar ballet seems to have catapulted Chinese-born choreographer Shen Wei to the top of the New York dance scene’s list of up-and-comers. Shen’s interpretation of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring strips away much of the imagery and symbolism which have been imposed on it ever since it first premiered in Paris. The dance takes place on a geometric floor, and the only colors visible are black, white, and gray. It’s difficult to associate the new visuals with such a familiar work of music, but Anna Kisselgoff calls Shen’s reimagining of the Rite “a stunning and objectivist approach to a score that has been overworked as a Modernist symbol.”

“They’ve cut the budget, sliced the staff, and bid farewell to a group of longtime dancers. Now Boston Ballet is offering private time with the Sugar Plum Fairy. Yes, for $150,000, you and a few thousand of your closest friends can have your own personal performance of the company’s most popular production, ‘The Nutcracker.'”

Dance is all about line, and grace, and the beauty of the human form. But all art comes with a price, and while the dancers swooping and pouncing before us on a stage often appear to be impeccable specimens of the human aesthetic, you might not want to peer too closely at the ravaged soles inside those toe shoes. Says one Minneapolis-based dancer, “I sometimes can’t tell the difference between ballet and Chinese foot-binding. Both cripple you in the name of beauty. Yet it is this divine thing that I have to do.”

Robert Bondlow has unexpectedly resigned as the executive director of the Milwaukee Ballet. Bondlow had been on the job for only six months, and neither he nor the company are commenting on the reason for his abrupt departure. The company is in “somewhat precarious” financial shape, but doesn’t expect to run a deficit for the fiscal year just completed. Bondlow had a tough act to follow in Milwaukee: his predecessor, Christine Harris, was widely credited with stabilizing the business side of the organization and making it an attractive group for big-money donors to support.

One dance critic comes away disappointed from an advance screening of Robert Altman’s new dance film. “It is a disappointing hybrid that too often plays on dance cliches (a snapped Achilles tendon just hours before opening night, an ego-crushing bit of recasting, an outdoor premiere nearly washed out by a rainstorm, an alcoholic mother and litigious mentor) and never comes close to capturing the hour upon hour of class, rehearsal, repetition and intense, unwavering discipline so crucial to the art.”