Tag: 10.17.01

Scottish Ballet company members are contractually prohibited from publicly criticizing the company. But the dancers are furious about management’s decisions to turn the company into a modern company, so they started a website with a forum where they discussed their unhappiness. After the company threatened the website managers, saying “that some of the content was defamatory and should be removed,” the offending comments were deleted. The Scotsman 10/17/01.

American Ballet Theater has suffered under a series of managerial woes and money woes. Tuesday ABT appointed Wallace Chappell, 60 as its new executive director. Chappell is “the director of the Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa since 1986, who has also held ranking staff positions with the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Alliance Theater in Atlanta and the Repertory Theater of St. Louis.” The New York Times 10/17/01 (one-time registration required for access)

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