Category: dance

It’s been awhile since Cleveland San Jose Ballet left Cleveland for the West Coast. “No large-scale classical company has risen from the ashes of the former Cleveland San Jose Ballet. Instead, more than a dozen small ensembles are keeping dance alive.”

Project Bandaloop is “a group in Oakland that combines dance with the art of climbing.” The company “seeks out such places as the 12,000-foot Sawtooth Ridge in the Sierra’ where the dancers “hang by ropes and perform choreography in the air.”

Miami Ballet is flourishing. The company has just had a record year, selling 3,000 more tickets than last season, “surpassed expectations on earned and contributed income and ended the year with a surplus.” The reason? “People like spectacles” and that’s what they got.

In Sheffield, so few people came to a free outdoor screening of a performance of the Royal Ballet, that organizers could have bought each member tickets to the performance in London for what it cost for the screening. Organisers hoped that Monday evening’s performance would attract 20,000 people. “But the estimated audience was only 1,000 which, if correct, would mean that the performance subsided each member by nearly £30 – just a few pounds short of the cost of a seat in the stalls at the Royal Opera House to see the same ballet, Manon.”

The San Francisco Ballet has announced the appointment of Andrew Mogrelia as conductor of its resident orchestra, capping a search which has dragged on for five years. “Mogrelia has a long history with dance companies, having conducted for the American Ballet Theatre, English National Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater. He was one of six guest conductors who led the Ballet Orchestra this season.”

When Boston Ballet hired Mikko Nissinen to turn the company around, no one quite knew how such a feat could be accomplished. The company had been in chaos for several seasons, and could not seem to shake its image as something of an also-ran in Boston’s estimable arts scene. So how is Nissinen doing, one year into his reign? “It’s clear that Nissinen’s push for change, however subtle, has had an impact. The company that performs next season will be vastly different from the one that opened last September. There will be fewer performances and a smaller administrative staff. More dramatically, four of nine principal dancers, or featured stars, will be gone.”

“Unlike other styles of folk dancing, where traditional dances are handed down from generation to generation, Israeli folk dancing was an exercise in cultural engineering. Early in Israel’s history, people on the kibbutzim would gather around an accordion player and dance the dances of their homelands: the Romanian hora, the Arabic debka, and dances from Russia and Yemen. In the late 1940s, however, there was a deliberate effort to create original dances. The early dances were based on these traditional styles, but opened the way for creativity and innovation. ‘The whole idea of creating folk dances, instead of having them just emerge naturally from the community, is quite amazing’.”

New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, America’s top two ballet troupes, have been “playing rival spring seasons at Lincoln Center for more than two decades. Time was, the most profound and thrilling art lay with NYCB. Little by little, without Balanchine’s galvanizing presence as chief choreographer and—this should not be underestimated—chief coach, the power of attraction has shifted to ABT, with its warmer performing style, its growing complement of male virtuosi, its recent cultivation of tall, fresh, and athletic ‘American Girl’ ballerinas (Gillian Murphy, Michele Wiles), and the occasional dazzling guest star.”

“Again and again, when black artists adapt street work to the stage, the critics say it’s terrific. When it’s framed as black history, it’s more than terrific.” writes Joan Acocella. Rennie Harris comes out of a Hip Hop tradition. In his new piece “Facing Mekka” the “moral vision is broader, and, despite the videos, the means are largely abstract: music, dance. This makes it encompassing—a story not just of African-American memory but of memory itself.”

London’s Royal Ballet is broadcasting a performance of “Manon” to a giant outdoor screen in Liverpool. Viewers will be able to watch for free. “Throughout the summer, other opera and ballet performances will be relayed live to Liverpool and four other UK cities.”