12 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Wire reports on the new Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy.

AFP

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Many of the pastel works and drawings on display are too fragile to be shown for
more than three months so the exhibition will not move on to other galleries
after it closes on December 11.

Reuters

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The Royal Academy's magazine calls his series of pastels of dancers from the late 1890s "the triumphant culmination of Degas' career".

The final room of the exhibition features a short clip of black and white film showing Degas walking along a street in his old age, by now almost blind. The footage was taken by director Sacha Guitry, who had asked Degas if he could film him for a documentary but was turned down.

[dirac]

Kansas City Ballet takes up its residency at the Kauffmann Center.

http://www.bizjourna...ity-ballet.html

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The Kansas City Ballet will be a resident company at the new Kauffman Center, which opens this weekend. The ballet’s inaugural season at the center, where it will perform in the 1,800-seat Muriel Kauffman Theatre, will include the world premiere of Tom Sawyer, the Nutcracker, and Romeo and Juliet.

Performing in the Kauffman Center will be the second big change for the ballet, which moved into brand-new practice facilities at the Todd Bolender Center for Dance & Creativity about a month ago. Both venues will help the ballet compete for dancers, Bentley said.

Related article.

http://www.bizjourna...center-for.html

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Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts — a long-awaited piece of Kansas City's downtown renaissance — has its grand opening events the weekend of Sept. 16-18.

[dirac]

Richmond Ballet's season gets underway.

http://www2.timesdis...see-ar-1304273/

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The recognition energized the troupe, which last weekend opened the 2011-12 season. The first programs, which continue through Sept. 18, serve as a fond farewell. The selections honor Igor Antonov, who is retiring after two decades as a lead dancer for the company.

Antonov excelled in many roles. For the current programs, he coached others to dance in excerpts from his signature numbers; he also dances in "Who Cares?" — a ballet, urban and urbane, that George Balanchine set to the music of George Gershwin.

[dirac]

A brief Q&A with Ashley Page.

http://www.list.co.u...es-from-heaven/

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What was the inspiration behind your work Pennies from Heaven?

The music. Those songs have been with me since I bought the soundtrack of the Dennis Potter TV series [of the same name] just after it was first shown in the late 1970s, and I’d been waiting for the right moment and situation to make a dance piece to them.

[dirac]

The Metropolitan Ballet of Tacoma celebrates its 25th anniversary with an open house.

http://blog.thenewst...and-open-house/

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The community walk-through tour includes costumes, scenery, props, studio and office rooms, and visitors will get the chance to see the 1910 Odd Fellows building that has housed MTB for over two decades.

The museum is free, but donations will be accepted. Cupcakes and punch will be served at the walk-through, hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served at an alumni presentation that evening.

[dirac]

A brief Q&A with Karen Kain.

http://www.canada.co...4568/story.html

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Q: Why did you pick the dances you did for the 60th anniversary tour?

Karen Kain: The most important reason was to show off the depth of talent in the company and the depth of choreographic talent-we have two Canadian choreographers in the program. And I was restricted to not having an orchestra this time, which is probably the first time we've toured without an orchestra. We were also restricted by the companies on whose subscriptions we are appearing.

[dirac]

Australian Ballet prepares its new "Romeo and Juliet."

ABC news report, with video:

http://www.abc.net.a...-ballet/2882606

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We all know how Romeo and Juliet ends – there's no feel-good finale, clearly – but choreographer Graeme Murphy’s noir treatment of Shakespeare's best-known play steers well away from previous classical ballets based on the bard's tragedy. "It's a risk," Murphy admits of his dark new interpretation of an old tale for the Australian Ballet, which has its world premiere in Melbourne tonight after a charity preview on Monday.

In this production the action is not restricted to fair Verona, nor the era in which the original was set – in fact, as Romeo plucks a gleaming orb from the night sky at the end of the famous balcony scene, it is clear that Murphy’s take on the "star-cross'd lovers" is more magic realism than strict adaptation.

The Herald Sun:

http://www.heraldsun...f-1226135149164

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Ballet stars Kevin Jackson and Madeleine Eastoe yesterday proved they have perfected the passion of Romeo & Juliet's tragic young lovers during a preview of the Australian Ballet's most anticipated show of the year.

They performed the famous balcony scene in Shakespeare's timeless play ahead of tonight's world premiere of the Graeme Murphy ballet at the State Theatre

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The Sydney Morning Herald:

http://www.smh.com.a...0912-1k6c9.html

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Moving, challenging but most of all inspiring - there was nothing between me and the emotion of the dancers and I'm still thinking about what I saw then today. Napoleon Perdis says the theatrical makeup behind a powerful ballet tells as much of a story as the actual performance. What I hadn't realised until I saw Black Swan was that dancers do their own makeup - even dancers of the calibre of Madeleine Eastoe who was Juliet and Kevin Jackson, Romeo, in a company as prestigious as The Australian Ballet. As part of his sponsorship Napoleon designed the makeup looks and dispatched his creative team to teach the Romeo & Juliet dancers how to do them.....

[dirac]

Members of the Dutch Royal family attend the Dutch National Ballet's opening performance of its fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Item in brief.

http://www.rnw.nl/en...national-ballet

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Work by choreographers Rudi van Dantzig, Hans van Manen, Ted Brandsen and William Forsythe were performed. International solo dancers with ties to the company also took the stage.

The celebrations will last the whole season ending with a gala dedicated to the work of 80-year-old Hans van Manen, one of the Netherlands most important choreographers.

[dirac]

So You Think You Can Dance Canada is canceled. Item in brief.

http://www.marketing...ce-canada-35986

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At its height, Dance Canada – hosted by Leah Miller – was a ratings winner for CTV.

[dirac]

A story on the National Ballet of Canada's 60th anniversary national tour by Bob Clark in The Calgary Herald.

http://www.calgaryhe...7255/story.html

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Kain is dismayed to find that it’s generally assumed that the National Ballet of Canada would bring its biggest classical hits on the road to celebrate 60 years as Canada’s pre-eminent purveyor of classical ballet. The biggies like Giselle and Swan Lake. Not the case. “Because there are many barriers to bringing whatever I’d like to bring,” says Kain, who was named artistic director of the company in 2005.

The foremost of those barriers is cost. “We are coming with no orchestra, for the first time in the history of the company.”

[dirac]

Paul Lightfoot replaces Jim Vincent as the artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater.

http://artsbeat.blog...s-dans-theater/

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The company’s managing director, Robert van Leer, said the move came in the context of “severe budget cuts in the arts and culture” in the Netherlands. Mr. Lightfoot, a Briton born in 1966, will continue working with his frequent collaborator, the choreographer Sol Leon, and no one was named to replace him. Mr. Lightfoot joined the company in 1985 as a dancer and was named, along with Mr. Leon, a house choreographer in 2002.

[dirac]

BBC "Degas and the Ballet" slide show.

[dirac]

An essay on Bournonville and Konservatoriet by Tobi Tobias, reprinted in her blog, Seeing Things.

http://www.artsjourn..._remembers.html

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Bournonville's choreography requires dancers who, within even a brief passage, can alternate slow and fast movement, perform difficult steps with equal panache to both right and left, and spring into any direction at all without the slightest hint beforehand of which way that will be.

Dancers often say that Bournonville style demands a killer technique, especially because the performer must behave as if everything were perfectly easy. What's more, the choreography must be offered to the audience with a friendly, modest demeanor in which there's not a single thing that's fake. And whatever group is on the stage at a given time, all its members must present themselves as part of a heartfelt community. To dance according to Bournonville's values is to create a metaphor for civilized conduct.