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[dirac]

A preview of the new season in dance by Elizabeth Kramer in The Courier-Journal of Louisville.

The company presents this new grand ballet to its repertoire by a familiar and favorite choreographer, Val Caniparoli. His talent has been evident in works the company has previously performed, including “Lambarena,” the ballet infused with African moves that had a reprise last season, and “The Seasons,” which premiered here in 2010.

[dirac]

Alberta Ballet opens its new season with a mixed bill.

.......When everybody is pushing and pulling the art form to its extremities, that’s when Grand Maitre is really having the most fun with it. “It is probably one of the most challenging we have ever done,” he says about Great Masterpieces. “I mean it. Between Divertimento No. 15 which is a tutu ballet with the most challenging classical technique and The Four Temperaments, a neo-classical masterpiece (both choreographed by Balanchine). Then you have Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, that mixes ballet with baton twirling and jazz and modern dance. These young dancers are realizing that the repertoire in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was probably more challenging than anything being choreographed today.”

[dirac]

The Huffington Post picks up on the recent Guardian article about the role of black dancers in (and out) of ballet.

Jennings asserts that outright discrimination against qualified dancers is not just illegal, but outdated in the upper spheres of the UK ballet world, which comprises sophisticated leaders. He argues that change must happen outside the institution, at a community level. "Perhaps the simple truth is that only a limited number of black children are interested in training for classical ballet," he suggests. In his architecture, qualified black ballet dancers are not being rejected at the final audition because of their race. Instead they are never stepping in the studio door.

But what role do ballet's tastemakers have to play in that reality? We would argue it's a starring one.

[dirac]

A report on Pacific Northwest Ballet's recent lecture-demonstration at the Guggenheim by Marina Harss in The Faster Times.

There was some inevitable discussion of Balanchine’s truncation of Apollo, from which, in the seventies, he excised both the final ascent to Mount Parnassus and the expressionistic birth scene. No-one quite knows why he did this, and many people are still upset about it. I happen to like Apollo both ways, and we’re lucky in that we can see both versions right here in New York, the older, less stylized one at American Ballet Theatre, and the sleeker, more self-consciously “classicized” one at New York City Ballet. I also think that the newer ending, which culminates in a starburst pattern for the three muses’ legs, is rather nice, if perhaps not as dynamic as the processional of figures ascending a dark staircase at the rear of the stage. Either way, it’s a stunning ballet, and the pas de deux for Terpsichore and Apollo, danced with infinite tenderness by Körbes and Seth Orza—both former City Ballet dancers who seem to be thriving in Seattle— brought tears to my eyes, as it always does.....

[dirac]

Non-profit dance companies in New York find an alternative funding model. Story by Daniel Lehman for Backstage.

Through fiscal sponsorship, these established non-profit arts organizations can provide funding and infrastructure for projects created by independent companies that do not have their own 501©(3) tax-exempt status. The arrangement guarantees artistic autonomy for creators of new work; the sponsor takes over all administrative, financial, and legal responsibilities related to fundraising.

Companies with small budgets are therefore able to use their limited resources more efficiently, rather than spending time and money achieving non-profit status. According to Dance/NYC Director Lane Harwell, sponsored dancemakers devote 83 percent of expenditures to programming and artists, as opposed to 74 percent for “the smallest non-profits.”