6 replies to this topic

[dirac]

The Joffrey goes on the road with "Rite of Spring."

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Thursday's performance is part of the company's winter tour, which began in Los Angeles in February and concludes this week in North Carolina. Joffrey is one of the most recognizable arts organizations in America as well as one of the top dance companies in the world. Even people who do not know much about ballet recognize the Joffrey name.

[dirac]

TheaterJones offers a Ballet Frontier of Texas ticket giveaway.

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The performance includes two original works by Chung-Lin Tseng: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Pinocchio. Guest Artists from Texas Ballet Theater along with Ballet Frontier's principal dancers Marina Goshko and Andrey Prikhodko will be featured with the dancers from Ballet Frontier.

[dirac]

Alabama Youth Ballet Theatre performs next month.

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After the performance of "Sleeping Beauty," AYBT will also perform "The Ice Skaters," a piece in which the dancers portray ice skaters. The short piece, about 23 minutes, shows "skaters" in the early 1900s on an frozen pond. The work, with music by Giacomo Meyerbeer, is something Herriott performed while dancing with Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet for several years. He has staged the dance based on the choreography of Sir Frederick Ashton.

[dirac]

Reviews of the Birmingham Royal Ballet in "Aladdin."

The Arts Desk

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And what of the movement? Bintley is a vastly experienced choreographer, with a body of work ranging from short abstract pieces to full-length narrative heavies, and the overall production communicates fluidity – from the coordinated movement to the smooth linkage of the numerous scenes (minus a somewhat clunkier third act!). None of this is offensive, but it stays the wrong side of safe for almost the entire production, and doesn’t demand nearly enough from the capable dancers. Of course there are leaps and turns aplenty, but this is the kind of thing a professional dancer can do with their eyes closed.

Londonist

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Largely following the Arabian Nights story, while providing suitable embellishments, David Bintley’s new ballet goes at a cracking pace, and ensures that there is always something to catch the eye. Aladdin’s cave is adorned with illuminated stalactites, a staircase made from an upturned dragon carcass and jewels that come to life (although the latter is not an entirely original idea for ballet). The best of the Far East also meets Arab perfection as Chinese dragons dance amidst Moorish architecture. Once seen, nobody could ever forget the flying magic carpet sequence.

[dirac]

The Joffrey's executive director is leaving and an interim appointment is made.

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Christopher Clinton Conway, who has been associated with the Joffrey Ballet since 2005, and has served as its executive director since 2008, will be stepping down from his position in mid-April.

Related.

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Hechinger's appointment comes just days after a personal email from Conway was sent to friends and acquaintances advising that he was planning to depart for Los Angeles in early 2014, and was putting his home in a Chicago suburb on the market.

The public disclosure of that email apparently forced the Joffrey board's hand in making a management change now, rather than later. A Joffrey spokeswoman declined comment on the matter, as did Hechinger.

[dirac]

A preview of Ballet Arizona's  "Director's Choice" by Kerry Lengel in The Arizona Republic.

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“I try to never come to a place knowing exactly what I am going to do, because I don’t want to limit myself to my own ideas,” says Cerrudo, who was born in Madrid, Spain, and has been a dancer and resident choreographer with Hubbard Street in Chicago since 2005.


“I’m here for five weeks, which is quite a luxurious time for a choreographer for a 20-minute piece. The first week I wanted to get to know the dancers and let them get to know me and how I work in the studio. I wanted to play and see what are the good things that I can use from them, rather than me just imposing an idea.”

[dirac]

A review of San Francisco Ballet's Onegin  by Janice Berman for the San Francisco Classical Voice.

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The evening-length extravaganza, back for just one week by popular demand at San Francisco Ballet, where it opened last season, is a prodigy of gorgeous dancing, stars to corps; it has a lean, clean yet utterly gripping storyline, and it is profoundly physical. Its three acts are almost devoid of mime, but in the passionate articulation of each step and phrase, the words are as clear as those scrawled on the scrims of Santo Loquasto’s fetching scenery, with its latticed gardens and imposing ballrooms. Clearer, even, unless you read Russian. Onegin is based on Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin’s celebrated 1837 novel. There’s also an 1879 Tchaikovsky opera of the same name, but never mind; the music here is fragments of other Tchaikovsky works, arranged and orchestrated by Kurt-Heinz Stolze, beautifully played Thursday night by the ballet’s orchestra conducted by music director Martin West.