Tuesday, May 5

[dirac]

An interview with cross-trainer Joel Prouty.

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“I saw six clients today and they were all dancers,” he said recently. “I think every single one of them is having a very hard time psychologically wrapping their head around this and feeling like there’s not much of an existence out there for them.”

Cross-training helps a dancer maintain health and longevity, as well as preventing injuries. Mr. Prouty’s dream is that dancers — and their companies — begin to consider it as important as “their morning class,” he said. “Or almost as important.”

 

[dirac]

American Ballet Theatre will present its spring gala online.

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With the cancellation of the company’s season, originally scheduled to open next week, as well as canceled tour stops in the United States and Middle East, Ballet Theater said it was expecting to lose $18 million in revenue. The relief fund was established in March, with a goal of raising $1 million by May 11.

 

[dirac]

Marius Petipa is the subject of a new documentary.

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As the hourlong film swings through Paris, New York, Milan, Moscow and even Cambridge, Mass., it offers a good deal of fresh material, and the choices in storytelling widen its potential audience beyond die-hard ballet fans. Directed by Denis Sneguirev, who made a 2011 documentary about Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, this film is as much about the intersection of art and geopolitics, and the value of perseverance, as it is about 19th-century ballet.

 

[dirac]

A dancer, a choreographer, and a psychotherapist talk about the toll the pandemic is taking on the dance world.

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Terry Hyde, a former Royal Ballet dancer turned psychotherapist, says the dance world is a fraught place at the best of times, one where competition and pressure take their toll. Now he has seen a surge in people seeking his services. “It’s unrelenting pressure,” says Hyde. “Some of it is the self doing it, and some of it comes through the old-school approach that says you need to work through any pain.”

 

[dirac]

A look at how Philadelphia's performing arts organizations are coping with the lockdown.

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The dancers of Pennsylvania Ballet are back, in a sense. Laid off after the company’s run of La Bayadère was interrupted by the arrival of social distancing, the dancers are once again on payroll. They have eight weeks of employment through June 20, thanks to federal Paycheck Protection Program money.