Monday, May 4

[dirac]

An interview with Helgi Tomasson.

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Tomasson envisions bringing in dancers in small groups for company class, a daily event when the company of 72 dancers is at work. Long lines at the barre obviously won’t be happening. “We have five practice rooms. Maybe we could have five classes of eight or 10 people,” he said, and they could go first into their dressing rooms, then into a room to stretch — essential before class — and then into another studio, with time for cleaning the rooms in between the arrival of each group. “Maybe the doctors would say, ‘do it otherwise,’” he mused. “I have to wait until the city tells me I can do this.”

 

[dirac]

Bad news for Canada's National Ballet School.

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The National Ballet School, Canada’s most prestigious dance school, is facing mass layoffs and salary reductions since being excluded from the federal government’s wage subsidy because it offers academics to 170 of its students.

 

[dirac]

Performances from last year's Merce Cunningham centennial will be made available online.

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The idea germinated when New York Theater Ballet, whose 40th anniversary performances were canceled because of the pandemic, asked Patricia Lent, the trust’s director of licensing, for permission to stream some of its recent renditions of Cunningham works.

 

[dirac]

Seattle's ArtsFund releases new projections about millions in revenue loss for arts organizations.

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In the midst of all this activity, ArtsFund has also hired a new director, Michael Greer, who now runs Oregon Ballet Theatre, and had worked both as a professional ballet dancer and in the private sector in India and China.

 

[dirac]

A short video of Shanghai Ballet dancers in rehearsal.

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Amidst the state of the world right now with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Shanghai Ballet Dancers have kept resilience and faith to continue rehearsals with their face masks since the 17th of February 2020 anticipating their return to the big stage.