Category: dance

Oakland Ballet is struggling. Last weekend’s performance was “a disappointing affair that brings the company’s recent struggles painfully to light. After hiring a new artistic director last year, Karen Brown, the company has been trying to knit together a mostly new group of performers and to fill its ranks with enough qualified male dancers, all on a shoestring budget. It’s a big job, no doubt, but the results Sunday were dismal.” San Jose Mercury News 10/17/01

“Willam Farr Christensen, a Utah dancer who started on the vaudeville stage and went on to become one of the most important figures in American ballet, died Sunday. He was 99.” Dallas Morning News (AP) 10/17/01

“Despite incurring a disastrous $459,626 deficit in their 2000-01 season, Alberta Ballet officials asserted that the past season was a success Friday at their annual general meeting.” Calgary Herald 10/13/01

“American modern dance, a genre spawned and nurtured by women over the last century, has also produced a proliferation of extraordinary male dancers in the last decade. Wider public acceptance of men entering the dance field, the fostering of versatility among dancers and the accessibility to better training across America have produced discernible results. More men in contemporary dance have stronger techniques, dance with refined musicality and possess a more mature artistry than ever before.” The New York Times 10/14/01 (one-time registration required for access)

“The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is in the red after three years of financial surpluses. In the mid 1990’s, it managed to clear a debt of $900,000. But at a meeting Wednesday evening, the company announced it lost almost $170,000 last season, leaving a new deficit of $158,000.” CBC 10/12/01

Choreographer Twyla Tharp and rock-star-turned-classical-composer Billy Joel are collaborating on a show which likely will open on Broadway next year. One thing they might want to change is the name. “The Thoel Project” just doesn’t trip lightly on the tongue. New York Post 10/10/01

Chunky Move sounds like a gangsta rap group. Actually, it’s an Australian dance company. But the name isn’t altogether inappropriate, with “works that critics have described as ‘dangerous,’ ‘ugly’ and ‘uncomfortable.” Or you can get a hint from titles of the two works in the American debut this week – “Crumpled” and “Corrupted 2” International Herald Tribune 10/10/01

“National Lottery funding, supplemented by private and corporate donations and other public support, is giving British dance a major face-lift. The result is the construction of new, purpose-built centres for training, research and performance across the land, or the complete refurbishment of existing institutions.” The Times (UK) 10/09/01

“Across Britain, huge sums are being spent upgrading old dance centres and building smart new ones. [But] though these centres are undoubtedly good for modern architecture’s health, whether they have any value in improving the quality of modern dance performance itself is a moot point.” The Telegraph (UK) 10/09/01

Members of the Scottish Parliament “are set to challenge the controversial merger between Scottish Ballet and Scottish Opera, after conducting an inquiry into the dance company’s proposed change in artistic direction. The news will be welcomed by the ballet’s 36 dancers who have threatened strike action over the proposed change.” The Scotsman 10/09/01