12 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Construction begins next week on a new home for Ballet Arizona.

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The facility comes out of the dance organization’s Next Step capital campaign, which has raised more than 80 percent of the $10 million targeted for the project. Initial funding for the building renovation came through a 2006 City of Phoenix bond designed to strengthen neighborhoods, provide educational opportunities, improve public safety and expand cultural and community programs.

[dirac]

The weather interferes with the Dance Theatre of Tennessee's Ballet in the Park shows.

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Almost 1,300 people attended the inaugural Ballet in the Park performance series, which took place at Centennial Park on Friday and Saturday before being canceled Sunday and today. About 250 people stayed late Sunday night to wait for the weather to clear, though it did not.

[dirac]

A review of Richmond Ballet's Studio series opener by Susan Howson for RVANews.

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Richmond Ballet alumnus Philip Neal returned after over 20 years with the New York City Ballet to choreograph his first piece. Based on the avant-garde music of Lowell Liebermann, Neal’s Gargoyles is entertaining, stirring, and over far too soon. Three ladies bring various stone-creature elements into their joyful yet poignant performances: claws, wings, crouching…it’s all represented here and there. But as Neal puts it, “It’s not a cartoony ballet.” Their cavaliers are the solid stone that roots them. Holly Hynes, who Neal imported from NYC, made costumes in two weeks, and the grey leotards with vague claw imprints heighten the sense that these dancers are climbing over each other for the chance to break free from immobility.

[dirac]

Central West Ballet of Modesto supplements its income by offering fitness classes for adults.

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Although Central West Ballet has been around for 25 years, many Modestans don't know it exists, Coughlin said. The company has changed a lot in that time, growing from an amateur organization for teens that performed at high schools to a professional group that pays its top dancers and is one of the resident companies at the Gallo Center for the Arts.

The ballet began paying dancers in 2010. It started with contracts for three dancers of $300 a week. Today, the organization has contracts with five dancers for 36 weeks at the same rate, plus it pays seven additional dancers stipends of $100 to $300 a month throughout the season. The youngest company members, trainees who are still in high school, are not paid.

[dirac]

A review of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet by Adam Castaneda for Houston Press.

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The beauty of the mixed-rep format is that it gives dance companies the opportunity to showcase their versatility. In the case of ASFB, not only did each choreography draw from different styles of movement, each opened a door to a completely separate world.

[dirac]

A story on the Bolshoi Theater one year after its reopening by Heidi Mitchell for Forbes.

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Forget it, because when you walk into the glimmering, echoing cultural center, you might actually believe the delays and bad press were all worth it. These hallowed halls, after all, showcase precisely what $760m in restoration capital can buy: 280 grams of gilding for Ionic columns. 260 kilos of crystal to illuminate the central chandelier. 3,600 architects, construction workers, and artisans to replicate the missing Villeroy&Boch tiles and to erect the subterranean hydraulic rehearsal stages. When it re-opened last October 28—with every supermodel and head of state vying for an invitation, and tickets going for a reported $50,000 apiece on the black market—the Bolshoi surpassed any ballet or opera in beauty and expense since it first debuted under Prince Peter Urusov in 1776.

[dirac]

A preview of Louisville Ballet's"The Lady of the Camellias."

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The ballet comes with its own tragic backstory as well. This adaptation was originally conceived in the early 1990s by choreographer Norbert Vesak and costume designer Robert Glay de la Rose for Ballet Florida. With libretto written and music chosen, but no choreography yet designed, Vesak died suddenly of a brain aneurysm.

The project lay dormant until Ballet Florida recruited Caniparoli to rekindle the show, which premiered at Ballet Florida and Ballet West in Salt Lake City in 1994. It was Caniparoli’s first full-length work.

[dirac]

Q&A with Brian De Palma on his new picture, "Passion," which contains a ballet sequence.

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KASMAN: What was it like to direct the Debussy ballet?

DE PALMA: Well, it's one of my favorite ballets and she's an extraordinary dancer. It was a great honor to have her in the film. And I loved the romantic music. All that stuff works for me. I've always wanted to use that ballet, and I thought Jerome Robbins' choreography of "The Afternoon of a Faun" was incredible.

[dirac]

Dancers from the Australian Ballet will appear in Australian Vogue.

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Rather than attempting to reinvent the company, McAllister sees the photo shoot as renewing the historical ties between fashion and ballet.

"In the 20s, impresario Sergei Diaghilev commissioned Coco Chanel to design costumes for the Ballets Russes, and in the 70s Halston worked with choreographer Martha Graham," McAllister said. "We're always stealing from each other. People say that Christian Dior's New Look was borrowed from the tutus of dancers."

Related.

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Australian Ballet principals Adam Bull and Queenslander Amber Scott demonstrate the beauty and the power of the ballet in a shoot which artistic director David McAllister said augurs nicely with both the magazine and the company.

[dirac]

Terry Teachout posts a clip from "Apollo" on his blog.

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Jacques d'Amboise and Ruth Sobotka dance the prologue from George Balanchine's Apollo on the CBC in 1960:

[dirac]

Smuin Ballet performs this weekend.

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Smuin Ballet, a long local treasure, begins its 2012-13 season with the kind of innovative pieces for which it is known: Along with the West Coast premiere of “Cold Virtues” by choreographer Adam Hougland, Trey McIntyre’s popular “Oh, Inverted World” is back on the troupe’s fall program, which opens Friday in The City.

Hougland, a rising star in the dance world, drew inspiration from the movie “Dangerous Liaisons.” Created originally for the Louisville Ballet, where Hougland serves as principal choreographer, “Cold Virtues” features 14 dancers.

[dirac]

Yvonne Mounsey has died at age 93.

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In 1967, Yvonne Mounsey founded Westside Ballet in Santa Monica to teach children and adults. During the Dance Channel interview she expressed pride in the dancers who went on to careers in ballet - and those who did not.

“We’ve had many go become famous surgeons and doctors and artists and writers, it’s just amazing. And I think in part it’s the discipline,” Mounsey said.

[dirac]

A review of Fall for Dance by Leigh Witchel in The New York Post.

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American Ballet Theatre dancers Herman Cornejo and Luciana Paris came out in evening finery, and Paris was great — barreling across the stage and jumping into Cornejo’s arms as he put on his tuxedo jacket. But Cornejo never got the style. When he puffed his chest and posed, it looked as if he were getting ready to paddle over to “Swan Lake.”

Hong Kong Ballet’s dancers brought us Peter Quanz’s “Luminous,” a moody, romantic dance for eight, about changing liaisons. Yet the cast didn’t seem to get it. The work opened on a dark stage with the dancers teetering off balance, but they did that as if they were dipping their toes into a too-hot bath.