12 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Connecticut Ballet presents "The Sleeping Beauty."

http://www.newstimes...son-2216815.php

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The Connecticut Ballet will next weekend open its 30th season with a revival of Raphael's full-length production of "The Sleeping Beauty," featuring company ballerina Oksana Maslova as Princess Aurora and New York City Ballet principal dancer Charles Askegard as Prince Florimund.

With music by Peter Tchaikovsky and sets and costumes by Vozrozhdenie Theatrical Workshops, of St. Petersburg, Russia, the production is the largest in Connecticut Ballet's repertoire, explains Raphael, featuring 24 company dancers, 12 character performers and 25 children.

[dirac]

Ballet San Antonio presents "Dracula."

http://www.mysananto...ale-2214894.php

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Ballet San Antonio will premiere “Dracula” this weekend in the Lila Cockrell Theatre. The production is a first for the company, the city and Gabriel Zertuche, in his fifth season as resident choreographer. He's using the opportunity to shake things up.

“Since I've been here, predominately my choreography has been on a contemporary level,” Zertuche said. “This shows what I can do on a classical level.”

[dirac]

A review of the Joffrey Ballet's "Don Quixote" by Sid Smith in The Chicago Tribune.

http://www.chicagotr...,0,185085.story

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Yuri Possokhov, the onetime Bolshoi Ballet dancer who is now resident choreographer with the San Francisco Ballet, delivers plenty of trademark fireworks, but stages the story with something of the comic surety and jet propulsion of John Cranko, a Joffrey favorite. "Don Q" has always been the oddest of artistic ducks, resembling a lighthearted MGM musical more than Cervantes' landmark novel. Don Quixote himself and sidekick Sancho Panza are comic figures, hardly visible in some productions. While trimming the ballet to two acts, Possokhov heightens their roles and impact. They're still funny, but more central and sympathetic.

[dirac]

A review of Houston Ballet by Robert Johnson in The Star-Ledger.

http://www.nj.com/en...s_more_tha.html

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Thank heavens for the Joyce. Although Houston will never be able to present its blockbusters there, a sweet contemporary mix shows what the troupe is capable of. The evening begins on a high note with “Falling Angels,” a female ensemble and one of those deceptively spare masterpieces that Jirí Kylián produces effortlessly.

Kylián has a knack for revealing small movements, expanding the universe of his dance by drawing attention to details like the quiver of a woman’s knees just before she brings her legs together tautly, or the way a foot abruptly shifts direction on the floor. These details gain further clarity as they spread throughout the group. Echoing Steve Reich’s “Drumming” score, waves of movement pass like squalls of pattering raindrops.

[dirac]

Dalia Rawson of the San Jose Ballet School is awarded a fellowship grant.

http://www.mercuryne...rro/ci_19106871

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Rawson received a prestigious fellowship grant of more than $13,000 from the New York Choreographic Institute. And she's put the money toward a workshop she's been conducting since Oct. 4 with nine Ballet San Jose dancers, without the pressure of an upcoming performance.

"The luxury of all this time to experiment and create is extremely valuable, and I plan to make the most of these hours in the studio, Rawson said. "My goal is to incorporate improvisation into our creative process and to combine floor work and acrobatics with classical ballet in order to push the dancers and myself beyond our usual vocabulary."

[dirac]

An interview with Suzanne Farrell.

http://www.nytimes.c...eater.html?_r=1

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As a repetiteur, “you go wherever you go and stage a ballet and become very close, but after the first performance you never see it again.” With a company, “you have all the dancers and their emotional and technical needs — there’s a lot of all-the-time work.” Her dancers come from varied backgrounds: three from Bulgaria; a few who trained at the School of American Ballet (and one City Ballet alum); several attended Ms. Farrell’s early summer intensives.

It helped that, back in her dancing days, she had absorbed a good deal from Balanchine. “If there was a ballet I wasn’t in, I’d go out into the house and overhear Mr. B talking to, say, the lighting man,” she recalled. “I was getting in the back of my mind things about running a company that only came back into focus when I ran my own.”

[dirac]

The National Ballet of Canada gets closer to wiping out its deficit.

http://www.torontosu...t-posts-surplus

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To complete her term as NBOC board chairman, Lucille Joseph was able to announce a surplus on a 2010 season that saw revenues reach $26,842,000, against expenses of $26,793,000.

The resulting surplus of $49,000 reduces the company’s accumulated deficit – which two years ago sat at $694,000 – to $243,000.

[dirac]

A review of Suzanne Farrell Ballet by Sarah Kaufman in The Washington Post.

http://www.washingto...cPiL_story.html

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Hopes were high when Farrell began her venture here. Audiences and critics alike were anticipating a new locus of Balanchine’s legacy, and were eager to watch an exciting new company develop — one with the potential to become one of the most important artistic organizations in the nation. With her abundant and proven talents, Farrell deserves no less. But in 10 years her troupe has scarcely improved beyond its beginnings, and without the means to work with dancers year-round, she simply can’t achieve much more than we’re seeing now, even given another 10 years. The questions now are: Could Farrell’s talents be better used? And could the center’s money be better spent?

[dirac]

A preview of Ballet West's "Dracula" by Kathy Adams in The Salt Lake Tribune.

http://www.sltrib.co...pecial.html.csp

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Dracula is one of the season’s stock characters that visit our doorsteps and haunt our imaginations, and the bloodthirsty count takes center stage in choreographer Ben Stevenson’s 1997 ballet.

It was quite an undertaking to bring the family-friendly production from the Houston Ballet to the Capitol Theatre stage. Houston’s gargantuan Brown Theatre accommodates supersize sets, which had to be trimmed and adapted to fit the Capitol’s smaller dimensions.

[dirac]

A former dancer in Yuma is booked on over 100 charges of voyeurism, surreptitious videotaping, and exploitation of a minor.

http://www.kyma.com/...&cat=Local News

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"In September of this year U of A contacted the Yuma Police Department and informed us that they had arrested Bryan Wong who is 24 years of age, and also provided us information in reference to possible illegal activity that he was involved in here in Yuma," Officer Vidal Cruz with the YPD explained. She said the University of Arizona Police arrested Wong for secretly taping dancers on their campus. "Wong disclosed to them that he had also secretly placed video cameras in three different locations here in Yuma," she continued. "The Yuma Ballet Academy, the Yuma (Historic) Theatre and also the Yuma High Snider Auditorium."

Related:

http://www.kswt.com/...yeurism-charges

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Video footage of several events at the 3 locations dating back to November 2010 were found on Wong's camera.

34 male and female victims have been identified and contacted about the incidents. Police say they range in age from 6 to 41 years old.

More:

http://www.yumasun.c...ng-victims.html

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Wong graduated from the University of Arizona School of Dance with a bachelor's degree. According to Yuma Sun archives, he was in Yuma last December as one of three featured guest artists in Ballet Yuma's presentation of “The Nutcracker.”

Born and raised in Yuma, Wong worked as a freelance professional dancer with dance companies. He also occasionally danced at the UA and collaborated with other dance companies and studios in the area.

[dirac]

Edward Clug's "Radio and Juliet" begins a seven city U.S. tour.

http://www.dailybree...ure/ci_19109067

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Clug, 38, a Romanian who moved to Yugoslavia in 1991 to join Ballet Maribor as a classical ballet dancer, witnessed the birth of Slovenia just a few months after his arrival.

While still a soloist specializing in classical ballet productions, including "Don Quixote" and "Romeo and Juliet," he began creating his own choreography, experimenting with the contemporary ballet styles of his choreographic idols Jiri Kylian and William Forsythe.

[dirac]

Reviews of Houston Ballet.

The New York Times

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The award, created by the Joyce Theater Foundation with the Rudolf Nureyev Dance Foundation, was instituted for the development of intimate works for large ballet companies that seldom perform in New York. Why, when there isn’t enough money to go around in the dance world, is the Joyce supporting a major troupe like the Houston Ballet? And as for Mr. Elo, even if I found his choreography fascinating — which I don’t — he’s not exactly a fresh face on the scene.

Gay City News

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In its debut performances this week at the Joyce Theater, the Houston Ballet –– since 2003 under the artistic direction of Australian-born Stanton Welch –– impressed even the notoriously reticent New York opening night audience with pristine technique, immaculate precision, and lightning speed that rival any other ballet company in America.

[dirac]

An obituary for Nina Sorokina by William Grimes in The New York Times.

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American audiences got their first look at Ms. Sorokina when the Bolshoi performed “Don Quixote” at the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1966. “Nina Sorokina, blond and piquant, jumped right into New York’s heart with the last act’s first solo,” Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times. Later in the tour, dancing in “The Nutcracker,” she stamped her reputation as one of the Bolshoi’s rising stars.