Category: dance

“The Kirov Ballet is to get a starkly modern glass and marble new home designed by Dominique Perrault of France. His design, of black marble covered with golden-hued glass, won a competition to design the new Maryinsky Theater for the Kirov, and the results were announced on Saturday.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov is on a solo one-man tour across America (raising money for his new dance center). “Why is Baryshnikov wasting time with mediocre choreography? One notes that he is stiff across the shoulders and neck, that the flexibility in his hips has diminished, that his jump lifts him inches, not feet, yet he is still Baryshnikov – still an incomparably beautiful mover. Still a riveting dramatic presence. Still in possession of the expertly timed look and musical phrasing, still capable of sweeping turns and wonderfully fluid motion. Part of the problem is that there is no repertory for the middle-aged ex-virtuoso. To continue performing at an age when few others would dare to step onstage, Baryshnikov has to have works custom-made…”

Now that choreographer Twyla Tharp has a Broadway hit, is she selling out? “Sellin’ out might seem a more appropriate label for a career that has advanced so publicly from avant-garde to Broadway. Tharp is even publishing a self-help book on the art of creative thinking this autumn. Yet she hasn’t abandoned her pure-dance audience – her small-scale touring company appears at Sadler’s Wells this week – and it would be foolhardy to suggest to her face that Movin’ Out represents her art’s dumbing down. Nor does Tharp look like a woman basking in easy success…”

To celebrate George Balanchine’s 100th birthday, New York City Ballet is planning a season-long retrospective of his work, presenting 81 of his ballets. “Among those who will participate are Valery Gergiev, the conductor and director of the Kirov Theater in St. Petersburg, Balanchine’s birthplace in Russia, and the Georgian State Dance company, the professional folk dance company from Tbilisi. Balanchine, who died in 1983, was of Georgian descent.”

Los Angeles has long had a troubled history as a nurturer of dance. But now that the Los Angeles Philharmonic is vacating the Music Center for Disney Hall, the Music Center is producing its own dance season. It’s a conservative season, but it’s a start on the road to developing a new dance audience. “Indeed, for better or for worse, the season supplies a kind of action painting of what American dance is like at the beginning of the century.”

“For the past few years, Sadler’s Wells has been going about its task respectably, acting as a receiving house for international contemporary dance on tour, and hosting the odd bit of touring opera or musical theatre.” Sadler’s new chief Jean-Luc Choplin “is not content with this niche. “The history of the second half of the 20th century has been of attempts to create access to high arts for all. It’s been done by cheap tickets, education projects, access initiatives. But all these have worked only to an extent. I want to create a genuinely popular theatre. Ticket pricing and access is important – but you have to change the programming.”

“The New York International Ballet Competition – founded 20 years ago and offered every three years – has established itself as one of the world’s premiere dance contests. It can pull promising dancers up from relative obscurity, enhance their professional education and boost them into career opportunities that would be difficult to achieve otherwise. And, with 48 dancers from 23 nations (and Puerto Rico) participating, it sets for itself the rather lofty goal of promoting international understanding and goodwill. All this in an intensive three weeks of class, rehearsal and performance.”

The field of disabled dance has grown out of “a combination of forces: the broader movement to improve the rights of the disabled; the growth of physical therapy; and the influence of contact improvisation, which is more accepting of different kinds of bodies and movement.”

Joan Acocella compares and contrasts American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet as their seasons wind down. “As A.B.T. gets more innocent, for better and for worse, New York City Ballet gets more sophisticated, for worse.”

A dozen years after the Joffrey Ballet moved to Chicago, director Gerald Arpino says the city has become the ideal home. Chicago is “a typical American city in that it’s still striving for its standards. It has that pioneer quality about it. It’s ambitious – you can see it in the architecture, you can see it in the museums. Yet it’s still always looking forward to new frontiers in the arts. This is always what the Joffrey has been about to me.”