Category: dance

“After months of consultation, the 44-year-old Royal Ballet is understood to be about to replace Princess Margaret, the inaugural president who died last February, with a mere civilian. In a move that comes as a snub to the Prince of Wales, many people’s favoured candidate, the ballet is expected to appoint Dame Beryl Grey, 75, one of Britain’s premier ballerinas and the company’s vice-chairman.” Is it important for arts organizations to have royal patrons anymore?

“All signs would seem to point to a revival of dance – real, tough, dramatic dance – on Broadway.” But the results of new high-profile dance shows are mixed…

The inauguration of a new auditorium in the Bolshoi theatre complex “marks the end of the first phase of a £300 million restoration of one of the best-known buildings in Russia. But the rest of the project is in jeopardy as traditionalists and theatre administrators fight over the fate of the Beauvais Portico – the 10 marble columns around which the theatre was built. “Theatre managers want to see it moved from its current position – inside the stageworks of the old auditorium – to make room for improved stage machinery.”

Balanchine and Stravinsky had a long and brilliant career together – the two collaborated in a partnership that inspired both. “For each, music was the ‘floor’ without which there could be no dance: ‘The composer creates time,’ said Balanchine, ‘and we have to dance to it.’ As such, Balanchine revered Stravinsky and deferred to him willingly. Balanchine transformed classical ballet from a lyrical, romantic, fairy-tale art into a gripping, sharp-edged, plotless drama of pure movement, and Stravinsky’s music led him to some of his most innovative choreography.”

When Pina Bausch decided to restage one of her classic works with dancers over the age of 60, she had 120 volunteers. “They all had some kind of shimmer in their eyes. They saw this as the chance of a fabulous new life experience, a new adventure.”

Why are police raiding clubs in New York? To stop people from dancing?

New York City Ballet dancer Robert La Fosse is retiring after 16 years. He “has performed here with, and for, most of the great ballet names for a quarter century, and he was one of the last of a handful of dancers still onstage who were central figures in the dance boom of the 70’s and early 80’s.”

Matthew Bourne is famous for his subversive rewrites of familiar ballets. But as his success got bigger and bigger through the 90s, he got more caught up in keeping his company viable. “It was all getting a bit grand. I felt that I was running an office rather than a company.” So he pulled back. Now he’s back to choreographing low-budget shows…

William Marri, 33, a former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, died Saturday after being in a motorcycle accident in New York. Marri had left the National last March to join the cast of the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp show Movin Out, which recently landed on Broadway. “Marri was riding his motorcycle before an evening performance when he crashed.”

Adelaide’s Australian Dance Theatre has won three of eight top awards in the sixth annual Australian Dance Awards.