sandik

Oooh, nice idea. We usually just get special pencils.

Tangentially, I got a very clean copy of this on ebay earlier this summer, for around $15 plus shipping. And I am a very grateful girl.

I'm a big fan of Theater Street as well. I'd add Robert Greskovic's "Ballet 101" to the list, and for a general history of dance, Susan Au's "Ballet and Modern Dance." And Marcia Siegel's anthologies of dance criticism, especially for her thoughts on Twyla Tharp. I'd also add Siegel's "Shapes of Change," an analysis of American dance that includes several wonderful descriptions of American ballets.

Dean has been very protective of her work, and from time to time has wanted to rescind permissions for performances. This time around, according to a colleague who has staged her work in the past, I believe she has indeed closed the door, though I do not know if it will remain closed. It's certainly her call if she wants to do it, but I truly hope it doesn't end like this. I would hate to see those works lost to future audiences.

His name is Darren (not sure about spelling, though) and the last I heard, he was involved in education in the Bay Area.

Good question, though I'm willing to believe that the person who wrote this up for the Lubbock paper did a cursory web search and noticed the school locations there without making the distinction between them and the company.

Oh this is sad news -- he was such a historical connection in the Chicago community.

The company has circulated this press release Pacific Northwest Ballet TOURS TO NEW YORK AS PART OF THE JOYCE THEATER’S FALL/wINTER SEASON January 5 – 10, 2010 Tue–Wed 7:30pm Thu–Sat 8pm Sat–Sun 2pm SEATTLE, WA — The Joyce Theater has announced that Pacific Northwest Ballet will be coming to New York City with seven performances January 5 – 10, 2010, as part of The Joyce Theater’s fall/winter season. PNB will present the East Coast premieres of two works recently choreographed for the company by Twyla Tharp and Benjamin Millepied; The program will also include works by Marco Goecke and Edwaard Liang. These performances mark Pacific Northwest Ballet’s debut at The Joyce Theatre. The Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization, has served the dance community and its audiences since 1982. One of the only theaters built by dancers for dance, The Joyce Theater has provided an intimate and elegant New York home for more than 300 domestic and international companies. The Joyce has also commissioned more than 130 new dances since 1992. In 1996, The Joyce created Joyce SoHo, a dance center providing highly subsidized rehearsal and performance space to hundreds of dance artists. The Joyce Theater now features an annual season of approximately 48 weeks with over 340 performances for audiences in excess of 135,000. PNB’s program line-up at The Joyce will include: Opus 111 Choreography: Twyla Tharp Music: Johannes Brahms Premiere: September 25, 2008; Pacific Northwest Ballet 3 Movements Choreography: Benjamin Millepied Music: Steven Reich Premiere: November 6, 2008; Pacific Northwest Ballet Mopey Choreography: Marco Goecke Music: C.P.E. Bach and The Cramps Premiere: March 16, 2004; Peter Boal and Company (New York) PNB Premiere: November 3, 2005 Für Alina Choreography: Edwaard Liang Music: Arvo Pärt Premiere: September 16, 2006; New Ballet Choreographers (New York) PNB Premiere: March 13, 2008 For more information, visit the < http://www.pnb.org/Press/Releases/2009Joyce_tour.pdf >Joyce Theatre press release.

That's a great line. And a great point of view. I hope that others who are in the same position will begin speaking up. It is indeed a very nice line. She's very articulate, and does a good job of projecting enthusiasm for the topic at hand.

Thanks for the heads-up. They started using video pretty well in the last version of their website, and it looks like that's continuing here, which is excellent news.

Well, Millepied is going to be in town later this year, and I don't imagine it's just for the seafood. Perhaps he'll be refreshing their production of his work...

Marcia Siegel, in the Boston Phoenix here As always, evocative and insightful.

It's a plot, I tell you...

My sister and I were watching the Elliot Kaplan video of Points in Space once, and I was in the kitchen getting something when Cunningham came back on the screen -- she yelled out "Merce alert, Merce alert!" to get me back into the room. I wrote a little something for a local blog here

I have a feeling that Leigh did not write his headline, though. "AT HIS MERCE" ouch.

MC might have thought about Krishna, but that last sequence moving upstage left is very Apollo -- thank you so much for posting this link. I've been feeling sad all day long.

As you can tell from the previous comments, there's a great deal of latitude surrounding the term "historic modern dance." In general, in the academic world, Fuller. Duncan and St Denis are considered the precursor generation in America (drawing some of their materials from Delsarte and Dalcroze). Humphrey. Weidman, Graham and Holm are often referred to as the "pioneers," and much of American modern dance can be traced back to one or the other of them. There were other artists who were their contemporaries, but they were the backbone of the work. One other interpretation of "historic modern dance" might be work that isn't combined or "fused" with other materials (including ballet), so that the list would likely expand to include Limon, Cunningham, and Taylor, among others. I've always liked Susan Au's "Ballet and Modern Dance" as a general dance history text, but if you're interested in Duncan and St Denis' generation, look for "Where She Danced" by Susanne Shelton. For the next chunk of time, try the "Modern Movers" section of Deborah Jowitt's "Time and the Dancing Image."

In the film "A Portrait of Giselle" there's a sequence of Anton Dolin coaching Mc Bride and (I think) Helgi Tomasson in Giselle, act 1.

From Judith Smith, artistic director of Axis Dance Company "Dance is not for the meek."

I'm now struggling to imagine movement outside time and space... seriously, and with all due respect (because I'm pretty sure Cunningham can imagine movement outside time and space)... I must be overlooking something obvious? As with much of Cunningham's work, I think this aphorism is trickier than it first appears. I usually refer to it when I talk about his aesthetic and its bare bones quality, or when I talk about some of the overwrought definitions of dance that were popular in the 1950s. For Cunningham, I think it means that dance is a series of actions in a specific place that we perceive in the order they appear -- it's movement ordered by time and bounded by space.

Oh, I'm laughing and laughing!

Thank you for putting your finger on it. I know that it's a very satisfying role to dance, and I'm interested in how the emphasis on that part (using him as a framing device for the story as a whole) influences the construction of the ballet, but there are moments in the choreography that do feel way over the top, and, yes, very like Eifman. Kitten with a whip.

Lordy -- that's an amazing image! And I love the caption referring to Graham as a ballerina.

I remember this comment as well, and it was in reference to the post-Farrell NYCB. Don't think it was in the Mazo, but can't pin it down otherwise. One of my big regrets is that I saw so little of McBride live. I know her best, really, through the parts that were made on her, as I see the Balanchine rep staged on other generations. And I agree, she was a phenomenal dancer.

The new website is indeed a surprise, I didn't get any notice of a change through the usual channels. On first browse, it seems pretty good. I really don't like the teal -- it looks too much like the Seahawks uniform color to me (Seattle pro football team) And the images are a bit too wide for my monitor size. But those are probably just me. In the section on history and company structure: They've updated the standard company bio and made sure to acknowledge the early players (Janet Reed, Lew Christensen, Leon Kalimos, Melissa Hayden). I didn't click through to the PDF file, so don't know if that's been re-written as well. They've changed the repertory to an "active" list, which I assume means works that we might consider fair game for programming, which means if you want a list of stuff they've done and dropped you need to go back through your own files. They've included the PNB premiere dates, which is really helpful if you're writing about the history of a work in the company, but it's organized alphabetically by title instead of choreographer, so if you want to check to see if a particular artist is part of the group you have to page through it line by line (I know this seems like a small detail to most people, but it's something I do regularly, so I notice...) I'll have to go back and do some more looking around to see who's now missing in action. And they've got their financial stuff on the site: annual report, audited financial report and IRS 990. Haven't looked at them yet, but that's a very nice feature.