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[dirac]

An interview with Christopher Wheeldon.

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“This production has to be the best dance adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s beloved children’s classic on the planet,” gushed Paula Citron in the Globe and Mail. “Alice” is a “monumental achievement,” she wrote, but it is also, she added in the next paragraph, “a cash cow.”

Wheeldon wasn’t surprised by the qualified praise. “Our intention was to make a ballet that would encourage people to come in, enjoy themselves and then, God forbid, come back,” he said. “There is room in our little tightknit ballet world for ballets that do that, that excite people who haven’t been to the ballet before. So what if it is entertaining. Who said that entertainment was something that we shouldn’t be thinking about in ballet?”

[dirac]

A review of English National Ballet by Sam Smith for Londonist.

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Amid an excellent line-up, the stand-out performance comes from Tamara Rojo, the former Royal Ballet Principal Dancer and ENB’s new Artistic Director, as Princess Aurora. Besides her superlative technique, such surety yet refinement underlie every single movement that she can convey a myriad of emotions in just a bend of the knee or curve of the arm, the pulses of energy positively cascading through her body. She also proves happy to take tremendous risks in the famous Rose Adagio, and the fact that they pay off so handsomely only makes her performance all the more thrilling.

[dirac]

Society pages report on the Joffrey Ballet's annual Nutcracker Family Dinner.

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Joffrey Ballet Executive Director Christopher Clinton Conway and artistic director Ashley Wheater, along with event co-chairs Laura Kofoid and Carol Stone, welcomed the crowd. With more than 650 attendees, this year's event was the largest to date and raised more than $150,000 for the organization.

[dirac]

Wendy Whelan is interviewed about a new documentary, "Wendy Whelan: Moments of Grace."

What was it like to have the spotlight on you offstage?
Tom filmed a lot of me in Louisville, so I felt like a lot of it was about me growing up and me as a person. That’s never really been spotlighted. And I loved it. Now, in the twilight of my time at New York City Ballet, I felt like I had a lot to say about how I got here. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have had the same feelings.

[dirac]

Zippora Karz coaches Central West Ballet in "Serenade."

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After reviewing a DVD of excerpts of Central West's performances, the trust decided the company could perform only the first movement of the ballet "Serenade." The performances will be Feb. 15-16 at the Gallo Center in downtown Modesto.

[dirac]

A preview of Miami City Balletin Liam Scarlett's new piece, "Euphotic."

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In Euphotic, 28 dancers are lead by three principal dancers and their partners. Principal dancer Jeanette Delgado who has worked with Scarlett once before on the highly acclaimed piece “Viscera” was really his muse for this dance.

[dirac]

A review of the ENB  by Ismene Brown for The Arts Desk.

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It’s testament to the lustre of the Coliseum’s all-star opening night that it takes me this long to get to the principal performers. Rojo’s dancing of this summit of roles is, as expected, exquisite, musically ravishing, furled and tapered with wondrous style, wholly in command of the grand technique, but if only she’d look happier we could all go home at the end of the night feeling our lives had been blessed and warmed by the vision of the sun’s rising. As it is, her rather stern, queenly demeanour undercut the impression that the public wants, of boy meets girl, the witch is dead, and all’s right with the world.