13 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Teacher, dancer, and actor Zina Bethune, aged 66, is killed in an apparent hit-and-run accident.

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Bethune trained under George Balanchine and began performing with the New York City Ballet at age 14, overcoming diagnoses of scoliosis and lymphedema.

She worked as an actress in television and movies, and beginning in 1982, she taught thousands of disabled children across Southern California to dance to ballet, jazz and rock 'n' roll through her nonprofit dance company.

[dirac]

A review of Atlanta Ballet in "The Princess and the Goblin" by Cynthia Perry in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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Tharp has pushed Atlanta Ballet’s dancers to make enormous artistic strides. Her choreography – intricate rhythm, quick direction changes and daredevil partnering – combine with nuanced acting through 70 minutes of nonstop action.

Under Ari Pelto’s direction, the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra plays a score orchestrated and arranged by Richard Burke. The mix of Franz Schubert’s and Burke’s music recalls the era in which Schubert lived, when ballerinas began rising onto the tips of their toes.

[dirac]

A review of Perm Balletby Laura Cappelle in The Financial Times.

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Serenade opened the troupe’s Tchaikovsky/Minkus triple bill on the wrong foot. This 1934 ballet is the first glimpse Balanchine gave New York of the journey he was about to take American ballet on, and while he himself was trained in the St Petersburg tradition, his works stretched technique in directions Russian training still doesn’t prepare dancers for. With the Perm, it makes for a stiff rendition: the emphasis is so firmly on leg and arm positions that the bigger picture, the boldness and kinetic flow Balanchine favoured, simply fades away.

[dirac]

A review of Ballet Westin "Don Quixote" by Heather Hayes in The Deseret News.

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Artistic director Adam Sklute even called upon Russian-trained Anna-Marie Holmes to stage a true-to-its-roots “Don Quixote.” So while the characters and plot are loose and a little mindless (not likely to induce any shining epiphanies), they clear the way for plenty of dazzle, delight and to showcase talent.

And showcase it does.

[dirac]

A review of Tulsa Balletin "Romeo and Juliet" by James D. Watts Jr. in Tulsa World.

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Liang's choreography is firmly rooted in classical ballet, but he twists and stretches the classical ideal in intriguingly modern ways that gives each scene freshness and energy, with numerous details that make this story as real and as human as possible.

Working with top fight choreographer J. Steven White, Liang created a series of sword-fighting scenes that were thrilling in their speed and viciousness - though carefully choreographed, they did not come off as completely stylized and therefore safe.

[dirac]

Calvin Hannafordof Australian Ballet writes about himself for the Melbourne Weekly.

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One of my best experiences so far was participating in a small event at Sydney Theatre called Bodytorque. It gives emerging choreographers a chance to create dance pieces for people within the company. I danced with Vivienne Wong to a piece called Trace by Alice Topp. It was a beautiful thing to do because it’s a small, intimate event.

I’m one of six dancers nominated for the 2012 Telstra Ballet Dancer Award (TBDA). To be nominated by my fellow company members is awesome. The judges watch our performances as well as our work ethic.

[dirac]

A review of West Australian Balletby Rita Clarke in The Australian.

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Strings 32 culminated in an impressive display of blue and white balloons held individually by the full company.
One of Cavallari's last creations for the WAB -- he leaves at the end of the year -- Strings 32 was a fluidly executed enactment of the serendipity of human contact.

Human interaction defined two other contemporary pieces on the program. Reed Luplau's Sixth Borough had seven lawless interlopers in a Mad Max scenario with brutal confrontations. Set to music from Maroon 5, Daft Punk and Scanner, the piece had an exciting underlying tension in taut duets and ensembles.

[dirac]

Honors announced for William Forsythe and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

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Mr. Baryshnikov, born in Latvia to Russian parents, is being honored for his "body of distinguished work and his legacy of advancing the field of dance," according to a statement. Michel Kouakou, a choreographer from the Ivory Coast, received the 2012 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, which includes a cash award of $25,000.The Vilcek Prize honors immigrants who have played a significant role in the vibrancy of culture in the United States.

[dirac]

The Saratoga Performing Arts Centerannounces the schedule for New York City Ballet's summer season.

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The Ballet Gala on July 14 will feature three SPAC premieres of new work highlighted by a World Premiere ballet by NYCB dancer and rising choreographer Justin Peck. The new work will be Peck’s first ballet for NYCB. Peck’s new work will be set to composer Philip Glass’ Four Movements for Two Pianos, which was composed in 2008. Glass, who in 1985 was SPAC’s first-ever composer in residence, celebrates his 75th birthday this year, with the music world celebrating his extraordinary body of work with performances and events around the country.

[dirac]

A review of the Grand Rapids Ballet Company by Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk for The Grand Rapids Press.

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The sum total of all four illustrated the breadth and depth of the company, now totaling 24 professionals, apprentices and trainees, in the performance I attended on Sunday afternoon in GRBC's Wege Theatre.

No question, “Red Angels,” choreographed by Ulysses Dove, was a highlight of “Amore & More.” A vivid, electrifying piece, it featured guest electric violinist Mary Rowell from New York playing passionately the score by Richard Einhorn that sizzles. Premiered in 1994, it's one of Dove's last works before his death two years later.

[dirac]

A review of the New Chamber Ballet by Claudia La Rocco in The New York Times.

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Still, he is something of a site-specific artist, one who does not have to account for the rehearsal-space-to-concert-hall shift taken as a given by most of his colleagues. This is especially true in ballet, where that shift tends to be particularly pronounced; movements that seem outsize in a studio barely register in a cavernous opera house.

Instead of wrestling with that transition, Mr. Magloire, and his audiences, can burrow into intimacy and detail. A dancer rising onto point has a much more visceral impact when the act happens only several feet away from you and on the same level: there is a democracy of doing and watching here that is very important.

[dirac]

The Birmingham Royal Ballethelps some nursing home residents to recreate their lives in dance.

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It’s part of the Celebrate Project, a partnership between Birmingham City Council’s Arts Champion scheme and Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB), which uses dance company dna3d.

Great grandmother-of-two Winnie Cross, aged 100, was among the first to have her life interpreted in dance for the sessions, which started last month and will end on March 7.

[dirac]

Northern Balletfinds a second home, this one for smaller scale productions.  Review of the company by Charles Hutchinson in The Press of York.

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The studio will enable David Nixon's company to present programmes of short dance pieces, introducing choreographic debuts and previews of Northern Ballet's next premiere, as well as works that stretch bodies and range of dancing in different ways.

Perpetual Motion is the first such mixed programme of more intimate pieces, its title echoed by the opening Perpetuum Mobile, one of Christopher Hampson's early works for English National Ballet.

[dirac]

A review of the Stuttgart Balletin “Das Fräulein von S.”  by Horst Koegler for danceviewtimes.

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It’s a very complicated plot and Spuck and his dramaturg Michael Kuester have solved it by introducing an actress, the French Mireille Mossé, known from many films and TV-productions, who quotes from Hoffmann, declaiming sort of Brecht-alienating texts in German. Of miniature growth, she looks like a gnome – as many baroque courts employed them (for instance in Oscar Wilde’s famous poem “Birthday of an Infant”). She looks like the daughter of Edith Piaf and the French jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani, a dwarf-like figure which reminds one of Kleinzach in the opera “Tales of Hoffmann”), a busybody, who helps to clear the entangled threads of the plot).