17 replies to this topic

[dirac]

A feature on summer intensives by Rebecca Milzoff in The New York Times.

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The audition in disguise isn’t confined to the ballet world. Macy Sullivan, 22, a rising senior at Juilliard, first took interest in the Mark Morris Dance Group as a freshman, after seeing Mr. Morris’s “Gloria” in the conservatory’s annual concert. “But I didn’t want to go when I was younger,” she said of the summer intensive. “I still had a lot to learn in school. I knew now would be a good time to start letting them see me.”

Potential students for these intensives usually have to apply each year; auditions are held in cities around the country. The students are about 12 to 18 for ballet programs, while modern-dance students skew slightly older. Admission can be competitive and expensive. Intensives at School of American Ballet, American Ballet Theater and the Ailey School cost $2,300 to $2,800, before room and board, though many companies offer scholarships. Even without one, dancers and their families are willing to pay.

[dirac]

The Bolshoi Ballet performs Wayne McGregor's "Chroma."

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Bolshoi's veteran, classically trained Russian dancers were initially resistant to the ultra-modern dance, which is dominated by abrupt, rippling body movements that make dancers appear boneless.

"When the artists first saw McGregor's ballet there was fear. There were many letters from artists refusing to take part in the production, which they said was either not for them or too difficult (to do)," Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director, told Reuters ahead of the premiere.

[dirac]

The Bolshoi Theater will reopen October 28.

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The first theatrical performance will be a production opening November 2 of Glinka's opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila" directed by Dmitry Chernyakov, a director in demand worldwide whose modern productions have been major Bolshoi hits.

This will be followed on November 18 by Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Sleeping Beauty" in an updated production by the legendary former Bolshoi ballet supremo Yuri Grigorovich.

[dirac]

Reviews of the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

The Financial Times

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The sadness of the evening, apart from the choreography, was that the New Zealand dancers are unfailingly dedicated to making the best of the bad jobs they must show us. But their devotion to the task is not enough to persuade me that the repertory was wisely chosen, or flattering to their gifts. The opening Plan to A by Jorma Elo has the curious distinction of using massively un-danceable music for violin, chamber organ and harpsichord by Heinrich Biber and obliging us to watch seven dancers fidget interminably in red costuming to the over-amplified writings of this earnest baroque master.

The Telegraph

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The Royal New Zealand Ballet, unscathed by earthquake damage in Christchurch, has just brought to Britain a brave triple bill, showcasing 18 of its 32 dancers. Accompanying them were three artistic directors, past, present and future – Gary Harris, who commissioned the recent works, hands over the company in September to Ethan Stiefel, principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre for the last 14 years. Matz Skoog is acting as interim director.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet

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Best of all is Javier de Frutos’s Banderillero in which five couples are dressed in off-white costumes, the men in diaphanous shirts and the women in long dresses that swirl and float like half-whipped cream. Within a square of light bordered by darkness the dancers move in a lithe, vaguely tribal display of what may be a fertility dance at a joint wedding ceremony.

[dirac]

Reviews of the English National Ballet in a Roland Petit triple bill.

The Guardian

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Perhaps Petit depended on his original star dancers to carry the material: certainly some of ENB's young cast look underpowered for the task. Begoña Cao has the vampy legs and eyes for Carmen, but not the devilment, Esteban Berlanga the El Greco face but not the visionary despair for the Boy in L'Arlésienne. Youth, and a touch of artlessness do however serve Johan Acosta (21-year-old nephew of Carlos very well in Jeune Homme. Reckless with hormones and angst Acosta completely convinces us he lives, and dies, on the stage

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The Evening Standard

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Petit's style is pick'n'mix, but his theatrical vision is his own, and with practice the ENB dancers will conquer it. The current generation is new to the ballets, and the dancers' unfamiliarity means they occasionally looked rushed. The sets, meanwhile, looked wonky, a sure sign things need to bed in.

The Arts Desk

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In the three of his famous works on parade last night at the London Coliseum sex and death stalk young men, in the shape of inexorably enticing women. Yes, one could swat it away as a typical Frenchman’s cliché to present women obsessively in this way, but, by gum, it works as dance theatre in today’s antiseptic times. Suicide, suicide, murder, all driven by desire. Last night’s audience lapped it up and I suggest it will be a long time again before any British stage presents a programme of ballets celebrating the urges of the loins with so much style and so little shame.

[dirac]

An interview with Jorma Elo.

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A big part of this distaste is that Elo is a perfectionist, and a tinkerer to boot. Looking at his own work being performed, mostly what he sees are the ways it could be improved. Even watching pieces by other choreographers draws him into the same hypercreative zone. “I love to look at the dancers; it gives me a buzz,” he said. “But I still look at how it could be structured better, modified. I never look at a dance performance and just let it flow. I try to study. If you're not curious of the options in what you're making, you kind of die.”

What interests Elo — though, from the way he speaks about it, “thrills” is probably the better word — is the process of creation. Dance is his default form: “I'm in this business because I can't build houses,” he said. “This is my way of making something, and I've fallen in love with the process of doing it with other people.”

[dirac]

A review of the ENBby Neil Norman in The Daily Express.

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Carmen is rampant with sexuality, not that you'd know it from this production.

Begona Cao, resplendent in a black corset and cropped wig, looks every inch the bad girl of Bizet's opera and performs the twisting, vicious and saucy steps well without actually letting the role possess her. She is not helped at all by Fabian Reimair's woodenly narcissistic Don Jose.

[dirac]

A Reuters item on the Bolshoi's renovations.

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The Bolshoi's return to glory includes the refurbishment of an interior that was once paneled with rare pine and gilded by hand with real gold before the Soviets replaced them with sound-absorbent cement and copper.

The theater is gaining a second stage with a sound-reflecting floor coating -- specifically designed for opera -- and a ballet stage returned to its once-famous four-degree angle that is able to absorb impact, making jumping safer for dancers.

[dirac]

An interview with Leigh Alderson of the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada.

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Now going into his second year with the company, Leigh is currently cast as Raoul in the company's summer series, World of Shadows: Phantom the Ballet.

"It's the most leading role I've done so far, I find it quite an exciting part," he said. "I have a love story with Anya, playing Christine, there's lots of acting, and a big fight scene."

[dirac]

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet and other arts groups get a sizable government grant. Item in brief.

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The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will get the lion's share of the cash — about $515,000.

[dirac]

Canton Ballet offers a dance camp for children.

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The programs include creative movement, healthy snacks, dance-related crafts and a Dance Camp T-shirt.

Parents and guests are invited to attend a special movement demonstration by the students on the final day.

[dirac]

A review of ARC Dance Company by Michael Upchurch in The Seattle Times.

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"Pastorale" was a goofy pas-de-quatre by Penny Hutchinson, a founding member of Mark Morris Dance Company. To the tick-tock rhythms of Haydn's "Clock Symphony," three tutu-clad nymphs gamboled through some playful scenery (a ball, a shrub, a giant puppy dog) until their dashing love interest (Geoffrey Kropp) deigned to notice them.

Attraction-repulsion sparks soon went off between Kropp and Lucie Baker, who in "repulsion" mode was hilarious, bringing drooping, hunchbacked contortions to her ever-so-precise ballet steps. Kropp, splendidly costumed in high 18th-century manner by Hutchinson, had fun too with an angular courting-call jig that was both robust and absurd.

[dirac]

An omnibus review of recent ballet performances in New York by Leigh Witchel for danceviewtimes.

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Lopatkina is in many ways the doppelganger to Diana Vishneva – the Mariinsky ballerina with whom New York is currently most familiar. Vishneva is an extrovert who projects outward; Lopatkina draws everything into her – a vortex where all of the emotions in the theater converge. In tragedies, Vishneva explodes. Lopatkina’s suffering is internal; she implodes.

One of her most subtle and powerful moments as Karenina happened when out of duty to her family she rejected Yuri Smekalov’s Vronsky from her sickbed. The smallest gesture from her outstretched palm was enough to stop him in his tracks and send him reeling.

[dirac]

Ballet students in York move onward and upward.

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Several girls from the Rebecca Davies School of Dance in Huntington have secured places at the Royal Ballet School and Northern Ballet, while 19-year-old Joseph Poulton has been awarded a contract with Ballet Black, which provides a role model for aspiring black and Asian dancers.

School principal and teacher Rebecca Davies hailed the achievement of her pupils in the face of stiff competition for places as “absolutely fantastic”.

[dirac]

Nashville Ballet celebrates National Dance Day.

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Nashville Ballet steps up for National Dance Day with free classes in a variety of styles — as well as a chance to be videotaped in performance for the Fox TV So You Think You Can Dance website.