7 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Dancers of the Pittsburgh Youth Ballet talk about their experience dancing with NYCB in Saratoga.

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The girls went to several ballets including “Serenade,” “Dances at a Gathering, “The Magic Flute,” and “Agon,” starring prima ballerina Wendy Whelan. The girls got to meet Tiler Peck of the New York City Ballet.

Sydney Borandi, 10, was one of the girls that was starstruck. “We were on an elevator with Daniel Ulbricht (a principal dancer at the New York Ballet, and former teacher at PYB)," she said. "He was really nice, but when he got off the elevator and the doors closed. We just all screamed!”

[dirac]

New York City Ballet's  mini-company, Moves, makes its debut in Vail.

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“When we tour in America with the NYC Ballet, we have a contract to bring our entire orchestra,” said ballet master Jean-Pierre Frohlich, who acts as coordinating director for Moves. “Part of the reason we picked this program (for Vail), besides being wonderful ballets, and very well known, is we had to find repertory that was never performed with an entire orchestra.”

The musicians' contract is unique to the New York City Ballet, and Frohlich said it makes programming challenging, but they just choose ballets that were originally performed with one or two musicians and then bring them along for the ride.

[dirac]

Florida Classical Ballet Theatre will visit Cuba.

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His journey as a dancer has included ballet companies such as Ballet Florida, the Venezuelan Ballet, where he performed in New York, and many other companies across the country. Up next for Corrales is a return to Cuba, where it all began, to perform with Florida Classical Ballet Theatre at several different venues August 4 – 11.

Preceding the trip will be a fundraising event Tuesday, August 2 at 6 p.m., at PBSC’s Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens. Guests will enjoy Cuban cuisine and be presented with a chance to meet resident artists Rogelio Corrales and Lily Ojea from Florida Classical Ballet Theatre.

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[dirac]

An interview with Lucinda Dunn about combining children and dancing.

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Her second pregnancy put paid to that, so yesterday's 20th anniversary was a warm but low-key affair in the AB's Melbourne headquarters. A cake and congratulations from her colleagues were the order of the day, although Dunn also did a bit of light barre work.

"I'm still doing class on pointe so my rehab next year isn't so arduous," she told The Weekend Australian. Her baby with husband Danilo Radojevic, the AB's associate artistic director, is due in three months. After Dunn gave birth to her first child, Claudia, in 2008, she was back in the studio in three weeks, back in rehearsal in three months and back to performance in five months.

[dirac]

A story on the renovation of the Bolshoi Theater by Shaun Walker in The Independent.

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Perhaps the most extraordinary part of the restoration process is the application of gold leaf that, when complete, will give the theatre a sumptuous appearance. Over three kilograms of gold – applied in a layer thinner than a human hair – has been used to cover the ornate papier-mâché patterns that adorn each of the theatre's dozens of boxes.

All of which is very impressive, but the refurbishment of the Bolshoi has not been smooth. Work has dragged on and the budget ballooned. An investigation was opened into the misappropriation of millions of dollars. In the meantime, Bolshoi's ballet and opera troupes have been squeezed into tiny rehearsal facilities, limited to performing on the theatre's New Stage, a garish new-Moscow construction.

[dirac]

A review of the Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet's all-Fokine program by Judith Flanders for The Arts Desk.

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More credit to the Mariinsky corps and soloists who danced last night, for every one of them was a be-er rather than do-er, holding back with elegant restraint, and letting the shape of the piece, and more importantly Fokine's groupings and tableaux, perform for them. All of the dances were just of soloist level, but all of them handled the material better than many more senior dancers can, or do. Maria Shirinkina, in particular, dancing the Mazurka, was exactly as Fokine must have imagined her. With a lovely jump, good musicality and rock-solid turns, she also let herself be wind-blown by the score, moving seemingly without volition wherever it wafted her.

The corps, as so often with the Mariinsky, made the piece. With their beautiful heads and necks immaculately aligned, they ever so gently allowed their bourées to drift them in front of the music, the Romantic ideal of Fokine made flesh.

[dirac]

A compare-and-contrast article on ballet and modern dance.

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Consider the fact that prior to the first ballet d'action, dance was considered a side show to opera. Ballet rebelled, proving that dance can stand on its own as a valid art form. Additionally, whenever someone set the rules for ballet, a choreographer like Nijinsky or Fokine would experimentally challenge the conventions. Ballet also allowed women to choreograph, shorten their skirts, and perform as the stars of the shows. This was certainly unusual when it was first introduced. Perhaps the unconventionality of current modern dance will seem typical sometime in the future as well.

[dirac]

A review of Thodos Dance Chicago: New Dances 2011 by Zachary Whittenburg for Time Out Chicago's blog.

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Which is what most of the rest of these artists could stand to develop. In Exurgence, collaborators Jeremy Blair and Mollie Mock present their strongest concept and material yet, but relentlessly vectored toward a flat note of tortured sexiness. Hare’s tre-/ter-/tri, for seven women, is cold and odd; Jacqueline Stewart’s The Art of Ice Cream is a cut above but conflicted and opaque.

Wade Schaaf’s manic closer, Shostakovich Piano Concerto, is the most ambitious offering. Choreographed in a kitchen-sink style of neoclassical ballet and gestural quirks à la Jorma Elo, with fiendishly difficult solos like what Val Caniparoli did to some dancers in the late ’90s, it’s a driving, pure-dance exercise like those regularly premiered and quickly forgotten at large ballet companies around the world. It’s not the kind of work to which these dancers are suited; it’s a bit like watching Star Wars Uncut.