Forty-eight dancers with dreams of the big time converge on New York for the New York International Ballet Competition. “Arriving from as far away as New Zealand and as nearby as Brooklyn, the dancers, in tattered tulle skirts, ripped T-shirts or see-through tights, are a varied lot with a common denominator: most view the dance world from centerstage in a mid-level company, or through the crowd in a corps de ballet. They want to catapult their careers into what many believe is the center of their universe.”
Category: dance
Dance Lives In Aspen Santa Fe
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, founded in 1996, is the real thing, writes Anna Kisselgoff. “The company has 12 engaging and very good dancers, two ambitious and smart directors who come out of the Joffrey Ballet organization, and the obvious enthusiasm of wealthy board members in Colorado and New Mexico.”
American Ballet Theatre – In Need Of A Makeover
American Ballet Theatre has a problem. “The median age of the ABT audience hovers around 55. These guys got hooked during the ballet craze of the 70s, and they will keep showing up into their dotage. But then what?” So ABT commissioned a media campaign to jazz up its image. But, writes Apollinaire Scherr, “ballet shouldn’t have to compete in the same market as inspirational seminars and Adam Sandler movies. ABT has everything it needs to draw an audience of its own: a large, well-trained corps, excellent coaches, a smartly conducted orchestra, brilliant, ardent principal dancers and a palpable group pleasure in exuberant performance. So what’s the problem? Why isn’t the Met bubbling over with new life? Why hasn’t ballet maintained its popular appeal?”
ABT Director Resigns
The executive director of the troubled American Ballet Theatre has resigned. Elizabeth Harpel Kehler was the third director to resign in three years. “Her predecessor, Louis G. Spisto, was forced to resign in 2001 amid accusations of mismanagement. Wallace Chappell served from October 2001 to August 2002, when he was moved by Ballet Theater’s new chairman into the newly created position of director of strategic initiatives.”
Toning Up With Ballet
More and more people are taking to ballet as a new exercise regimen. “The release of the New York City Ballet’s second workout has added to the attraction. The video, which has shifted more than 250,000 copies worldwide, has just been released in Britain. Already the tasteful images of perfectly toned, graceful yet powerful bodies have been enough to make women desert their pilates and ashtanga for a session at the barre.”
New Orleans Finds Its Dancing Shoes
“Call it the original populist movement: dancing for the people and by the people, all different people. Cross-cultural boogieing — that was this city’s first contribution to the national identity.” But somewhere between the Louisiana Purchase and the modern era, New Orleans lost its claim to being one of America’s centers of the arts. Still, the evidence of the Crescent City’s dance roots is everywhere, and the idea of dance as an art of the people, rather than an elite craft, is central to the heritage. “The people of [19th-century] New Orleans were multicultural in a meaningful way, mixing blood and traditions to make new and vital arts. Perhaps that is a model to revitalize dance today.”
San Jose Ballet Narrows Its Search To 7
“Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley has identified seven potential candidates for its top management slot and hopes to fill the position by September, according to Eileen Nelson, a board member in charge of the ballet’s executive search committee… The top requirement for the new CEO will be to craft a viable survival strategy for the financially troubled ballet, which has wobbled in recent months because of the tough economy, slow ticket sales and a decrease in grants.”
Lesbian Impact On NY Dance?
There was a time not long ago when New York’s dance scene was not hospitable to lesbians. That’s all changed, though “identifying a lesbian in dance can be harder than finding a heterosexual man. While anecdotal estimates of the number of gay men working in the Manhattan dance scene hover between 80 and 85 percent, the idea of coming up with an equivalent percentage of dykes seems laughable. But despite their dearth in numbers, lesbians impact the field in lasting ways.”
Gotta Dance! (But It’s Getting Tougher)
Dance companies in New York are suffering as money gets tighter. “Ticket sales are down. Tour bookings – the lifeblood of many companies – are even weaker. Even large arts presenters and the spaces they control have been asking companies to lower their engagement fees.”
Has Mark Morris Peaked?
Laura Jacobs acknowledges that Mark Morris is the natural heir to Balanchine. But then he peaked. And it’s been downhill ever since. “I became disenchanted with Mark Morris in the 1990s. I tired of a gender neutrality that yet left women with the short end of the stick, mainly because the dances showed so little interest in la femme (these girls are kind of like Anybodys in West Side Story, heartfelt tomboys). And Morris’s gift for metaphor began to seem played out, or perhaps abandoned, as if he was no longer interested in his most fundamental poetic device. Metaphor, after all, is artifice. It was increasingly clear that Morris’s early work was his best work, and it never got better than Dido and Aeneas.”