Category: dance

A new black-and-white silent film of a dance set to the story of Dracula captures movement on screen in a fresh way. “Made for the CBC, ‘Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary’ adapts choreographer Mark Godden’s ballet as a black-and-white silent melodrama, and happily, it marks a frenzied, hallucinatory departure from what viewers have come to expect from both Dracula and dance movies.”

“The importance of photography for Degas, a decades-old theme in scholarship about the artist, pops up again here. So, more surprisingly, does the prospect of Degas as an unwitting forefather of experimental dance of the 1960s and `70s. Degas, a political reactionary, certainly would have disavowed any such kinship. But his dance pictures foreshadow the way the work of Yvonne Rainer, the young Twyla Tharp, and their New York contemporaries would blend formal and informal movement almost a century later.”

John Adams on why is music is good for dancing: “I feel that what makes my music different from a lot of contemporary or avant-garde work is that there is always a sense of the body in it. I think that was largely missing in so much of the cerebral contemporary music that started with Schoenberg and was so pervasive from the 60’s until the 80’s. I never had any interest in that kind of composition; I always conceived of music as something that comes from the physical being, from one’s body.”

When the Royal Ballet’s Alina Cojocaru stepped into a role at the last minute two years ago, she came back a star. Now she’s the “darling of choreographers, critics and audiences here. She was quickly promoted from the corps to principal dancer, and the Royal Ballet gave her so many major roles that she has hardly had time off.”

“Six years ago, Marc Brew survived a car accident in South Africa that killed his girlfriend, her brother and a friend. It left him a quadriplegic, although he has since regained the use of his arms, and spelled the end of his dancing career – or so he thought. After extensive rehabilitation in Australia, he began dancing in his wheelchair and formed his own dance company, DanceAbility. He moves elegantly: sitting backwards and forwards, swaying and moving himself out of his chair and onto the floor.”

Philadelphia is home to nearly 2,000 professional dancers who use about 20 rehearsal spaces and 45 different performing venues. Those dancers and the small companies they work with want to build a home where they can work. Wait for it, warns a new study. “The primary issue, the study said, is that most of the city’s dance groups are tiny and do not have the business side of their operations in order.” It advises waiting three to five years to get better established.

When producers of “The Full Monty” went out looking for a cast, they purposely went looking for actors who couldn’t dance. But wouldn’t it have been easier to teach real dancers to fake like they couldn’t really dance? No. “You have to go back to a time when you couldn’t dance, when your leg wasn’t straight, your arms were not always in the right position. Some dancers can’t do that. It’s like asking somebody who’s learned how to walk, ‘Don’t walk.’ It’s difficult.”

“In late 2001, Miranda Weese, one of New York City Ballet’s most infallible and dramatically captivating dancers, underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair torn cartilage in her hip. She remained sidelined for a year, and not merely because of the time it took to regain her strength. Another nightmare occurred during her recovery: Ms Weese gained 40 pounds. Until then, she had never even gone on a diet.” It’s a long road back…

Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech is suspending operations for the 2003/04 season, citing difficulty in raising money. “The suspension is the first among major American dance companies as they try to cope with the troubled economy. “There has been a general consolidation within many of the companies. Companies have shortened seasons and downsized dancers. Middle-size companies like Mr. Feld’s, which has 14 dancers and a budget of $4 million, appeared to be struggling the hardest.”

Paul Taylor has been choreographing for 50 years. “It’s his passion for observation that has fuelled a lifetime of making dances — funny ones, tender ones, bitingly satirical or just plain beautiful ones. About 120 in all.”