12 replies to this topic

[dirac]

A study shows that Central Pennsylvania Youth Balletticket buyers spend a lot of dough in the area.

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Conducted by SU graduate students Chris Sheipe and Joey Reese, the study also showed CPYB operational expenditures of nearly $1.6 million and salaries and wages of nearly $1.4 million, for a total economic impact approaching $5.7 million

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[dirac]

Brooklyn Mack dances with Columbia Classical Ballet this weekend.

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“This will be the biggest thing I’ve done with Columbia Classical Ballet,” says Mack, who routinely returns to Columbia to dance solo parts easily incorporated into the performance or to perform at the company’s annual charity ballet LifeChance, typically to an enthusiastic crowd of fans and admirers.

But it is certainly not the biggest part he has ever played. Vying for that honor would be the numerous international stages on which the young man has danced, including performances in Helsinki, Venezuela, Latvia, Japan, and New York, just to name a few. Also contending would be the prestigious competitions Mack has entered and from which, of late, he has taken home gold medals.

[dirac]

Ashley Bouder and Matthew Dibble guest with Boca Ballet Theatre for a special performance.

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Boca Ballet Theatre (BBT) will kick off its 2012-2013 season with the "A Princely Affair" event. This year's signature fundraising luncheon and performance will honor special guest Henrietta Countess de Hoernle, in celebration of her 100th birthday.

[dirac]

City Ballet of San Diegocelebrates its twentieth anniversary.

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Steven and Elizabeth Wistrich, who both were former dancers in the Boston and Stuttgart Ballet, are known for their presentation of George Balanchine ballet. This season will include a San Diego premiere of one of Balanchine’s ballets, and will also open with the Emerald Jubilee in honor of the company’s 20th Emerald Anniversary. In addition, the season will also include George Balanchine’s "Emeralds" from his ballet Jewels as well as Balanchine’s Tarantella, a contemporary ballet by San Diego principal dancer Geoffrey Gonzalez, and Paquita.

[dirac]

Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre kicks off its twenty-seventh season.

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Mysterious Arrangements features Mateo's celebrated Time Beyond Time (2005), set to French composer Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’. Dancers’ Overture, set to Bach’s ‘Overture from Orchestral Suite #2 in B minor’, has not graced the stage since its premiere in 2001 at the Company’s debut performance at The Sanctuary Theatre. Mateo’s highly anticipated premiere will be the first of two during the Season.

[dirac]

The philanthropist and patron of the arts Walter Carsen is dead at age 100.

CBC News

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When the ballet needed dedicated rehearsal space, Carsen helped fund the Walter Carsen Centre, the Arthur Erickson-designed space in Toronto that serves as the National Ballet's headquarters.

“When I see a need I believe in, I want to help. Money is here to be spent. Give it where you love it and where it gives pleasure to others,” he told the Toronto Star in an article published in August.

The Toronto Star

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The popular philanthropist, known affectionately in National Ballet circles as the “care bear,” has been a consistent and dependable supporter of the arts in Canada for decades, particularly the National Ballet where he underwrote 12 new productions from Musings in 1991 to Romeo and Juliet in 2011.

His years of generosity were permanently acknowledged when the National Ballet’s new home on Queens Quay was named The Walter Carsen Centre for The National Ballet of Canada.

[dirac]

Q&A with the choreographer Marc Brewby Kelly Apter in The List.

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What was the inspiration behind your new work?
Fusional Fragments is an abstract work in collaboration with percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, composer Philip Sheppard and five very talented dancers. It explores the fusion of life fragments between my dance training in classical ballet, contemporary dance and my own movement vocabulary as a disabled dancer and choreographer.

[dirac]

A review of the Royal Balletin "Swan Lake" by Clement Crisp in the FInancial Times.

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When the curtain rises on Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theatre, you see an autumnal setting soon filled with an ensemble of young courtiers whose dancing tells of ordered grace as a prelude to the tragic events that will ensue. When the curtain rose on Monday night’s Swan Lake at the start of the Royal Ballet season, it revealed a madness of peasant vivacities, arquebuses, dropped goblets, a maypole, frantic mumming from “chaperones”, tippling cadets, fiercely busy supernumeraries, and a lurking unease – not least in the classical pas de trois, which smacked of desperation. As a prelude, this was no shy hint of mayhem to come. (The sole virtue was the elegance of Elizabeth McGorian as the Queen Mother, serene, gracious, real.)

[dirac]

Lincoln Center announces that it is now running on, um, wind power alone.

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100% of Lincoln Center's 21.6 million kilowatt-hours of electricity used each year are now supplied via RECs purchased from Green Mountain Energy Company. Also included in the transformation is Juilliard, which in the past was partially powered from renewable energy, but this is also 100% wind power.

[dirac]

American Ballet Theatreannounces plans for its spring season.

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The first of Mr. Ratmansky’s trio, “Symphony #9,” will be performed next week as part of Ballet Theater’s City Center season. The other two segments will have their premieres in May, and the complete trio will be performed in June.

Joining the company’s roster as guest artists next year are Alina Cojocaru, principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, and Vadim Muntagirov, principal dancer with English National Ballet.

[dirac]

A review of Smuin Ballet by Mary Ellen Hunt in The San Francisco Chronicle.

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Revenge might have been served cold, but the dancing was offered with more heated vibrancy in Adam Hougland's "Cold Virtues," which had its West Coast premiere when Smuin Ballet opened its season at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre last weekend.

Hougland, who created this piece in 2003 for Louisville Ballet, where he is principal choreographer, is one of a generation of young choreographers whose refreshing vernacular blends balletic form with the heft and universal expressiveness of hieratic gesture. It's a delicate mix that can at times look too studied and academic, but Hougland has a knack for creating a tapestry of inventive movement and evocative shapes that convey the essence of his story without coming off as pedantic.

[dirac]

Nevada Ballet Theatre presents "Jewels," with a little help from some friends.

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Joining NBT onstage will be Ballet West and Pacific Northwest Ballet, performing “Emeralds” and “Diamonds,” respectively. Nevada Ballet will perform “Rubies.”

[dirac]

A review of the Mariinsky Ballet in "Swan Lake" by Janice Berman for San Francisco Classical Voice.

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The first of the six performances was not without its challenges. The stage floor was distractingly squeaky, and, judging from a couple of minor skids, a bit slick. Consequently there was an air of mild caution to Act 1, wherein Prince Siegfried marks his 21st birthday surrounded by beautifully costumed nobility and his mother, who, in a gaudy headdress suggesting a yacht under full sail, bemoans his unwedded state.

The singular exception to the demureness of the proceedings was the Jester, the compactly powerful Vasily Tkachenko. He lit up the stage with his antics — if you can call a series of soaring leaps and tidy landings, and endless grand pirouettes, perfectly placed, antics. He did have fine comic timing and he did steal the show, which is not called Jester Lake or Swan Jester — but let’s not be picky. He was a delight. Ekaterina Ivannikova’s gamin charm highlighted the pas de trois. Andrey Yakovlev was a nicely potted Tutor. The corps of festive couples seemed almost too big for the stage, and yet everyone got where they needed to go in fine style.