8 replies to this topic

[dirac]

A preview of American Repertory Ballet's "Rite of Spring" by Robert Johnson in The Star-Ledger.

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Douglas Martin, who directs American Repertory Ballet in Princeton, knows those dancers were uncomfortable, too.

Martin danced in the Joffrey Ballet’s 1987 recreation of the original "Rite," and he recalls what it felt like to impersonate a prehistoric, Slavic tribesman. As he waited in the wings, sweat trickled from beneath his heavy wig and through the humid beard glued to his face. "The Rite of Spring" was an itchy ballet. Moreover, squatting pigeon-toed was agony for ballet dancers trained to stretch their hips the other way.

[dirac]

Social notes on Arts San Antonio's party for the Joffrey Ballet.

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Mixing with Joffrey dancers were those from Ballet San Antonio, our own professional dance troupe, who had performed for guests the night before at the Joffrey Gala at the McNay Art Museum. Many galas are opulent; this one was as sleek and sophisticated as the gravity-defying dancers.

[dirac]

A review of the Eifman Ballet by Laura Cappelle in The Financial Times.

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What Eifman also does in Rodinis zoom in on a Pygmalion complex that closely mirrors ballet’s. Rodin is in charge throughout as Claudel and Rose tie themselves into knots around him and, despite her talent as a sculptor, Claudel is manipulated into the position of muse and assistant to him. The climax of the scene where they fall for each other sees Rodin physically mould her into his “Crouching Woman”. It’s a skilful visual realisation of an ambivalent relationship, and not without irony in a ballet world where male choreographers are still the dominant creative voice and women their clay.

[dirac]

A review of Pacific Northwest Ballet by Melody Datz in The Stranger.

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Commissioned in 1993 to make a work for the Swedish National Ballet, Dove approached Heaven as a way to work through a year in which he lost a parent and 12 of his closest friends, many to the AIDS epidemic. This batch of personal loss would leave most of us drooling on the kitchen floor, but Dove wove his grief into a piece so tight with emotional intensity that most of McCaw Hall's somewhat stodgy Saturday-afternoon audience was left holding its breath. The pas de deux between Andrew Bartee and Jerome Tisserand, Dove's reflection on the depth of love and loss between two friends, was the most powerful piece of dancing I've seen in years......

[dirac]

An interview with Fernando Montaño.

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And when I was waiting two, three hours for the bus – it was the year of the Elián González controversy and all the transport was being used to bus people in for marches – I’d think many times: “Who thought it was a good idea to come here?”’

Montaño persevered, graduated and moved into the Cuban National Ballet, winning some principal roles in his first year. A chance to go to Italy led to him being offered a scholarship by the Teatro Nuovo di Torino. There, the 19-year-old was spotted by the director of the English National Ballet School and invited to audition in Britain.

[dirac]

Charleston Ballet closes its season with a tribute to the late Robert F. Byrd.

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"Squaredance," a new ballet set to familiar Appalachian music, is among the pieces to be performed this weekend at "Partners and

Pairs," the Charleston Ballet's final performance of the season. Though the entire program is technically known as a mixed bill, Pauley is attracted to using themes to describe her creative products.

"I find people don't always recognize or understand the term mixed bill, but we can all relate easily to a theme," she said.

[dirac]

Derek Deane not thrilled to hear about a poorly timed pregnancy, reports Daria Klimentová.

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It's tough at the top. Nowhere more so than the gruelling world of ballet. But could it be that the principal taskmasters have asked a bit too much in the past of the top performers? The question arises from the new book by Daria Klimentová, a former prima ballerina at the English National Ballet (ENB), who repeats her contentious recollection of the day she told Derek Deane, the then artistic director, that she was pregnant. He, you may recall, gained some notoriety when his robust route to excellence was highlighted in a fly-on-the-wall documentary.

[dirac]

A review of Pacific Northwest Ballet by Sandra Kurtz in Seattle Weekly.

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The program opens at the opposite end of the spectrum, with George Balanchine's sublimely contemplative 1941 Concerto Barocco, which translates Bach into kinetic terms. Balanchine assigns two violin lines to a pair of female soloists, so that we follow the music's call and response pattern through their dancing, while the corps and an intermittent male partner amplify the structure. The movement is so exposed and the patterns so clear that the work is a 20-minute final exam in ballet skills for everyone onstage.

[dirac]

Interview in brief with Cristiano Martino.

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Armadale's Cristiano Martino is the only male dancer to be accepted into The Australian Ballet Company this year.