Thursday, April 15

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Darcey Bussell organizes a benefit gala for British ballet.

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Eight of the country’s leading dance companies performing together for the first time, a total of 65 dancers on stage at the Royal Albert Hall with an orchestra and a socially distanced audience, and an international stream to follow. I can’t think of anyone else in the dance world who has the clout to pull off a fundraising gala of this magnitude during a pandemic. But Darcey Bussell, the retired ballerina, former Strictly Come Dancing judge and popular TV presenter, doesn’t take no for an answer. So on June 3 she will make history with the British Ballet Charity Gala.

 

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Nashville Ballet returns to live performance next month.

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For their return, the company will feature a number of performances that appeal to all audiences, including a reimagined performance of Attitude from their virtual series.

 

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Houston Ballet will perform outdoors next month.

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The free, “multi-media experience” will feature live dances from iconic ballets along with music from Mozart performed by 21 musicians, according to a news release.

 

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A review of San Francisco Ballet in "Jewels" by Eric Taub for DanceTabs.

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Going from the sublime to the, well, less so, the ensuing Rubies was slow. Very slow. Old videos of City Ballet from the fifties and sixties show blistering speeds which the company of today rarely approach, and most other companies today, like SFB here, even less so. At least the corps dancers didn’t turn Rubies into an advertisement for sexual services that one sometimes sees today. Cheerleaders, not working girls.
 

 

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A review of the Ballet of the State Theater Nuremberg by Ilona Landgraf in her blog, "Landgraf on Dance."

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"Maria” isn’t the sort of piece that’s easy to watch. It’s a depiction of a harrowing condition that doesn’t have an emergency exit. You might think: “just another gloomy piece” but listening to Nunes discussing his background will shift your perspective. Born into a humble family in Brazil, young Nunes had to work to support them from the age of ten. At fourteen he was admitted to the Bolshoi Theater School in Joinville/Brazil; he graduated four years later. “Maria,” he reveals, is based on his mother, Maria Daniela Peremida, who was abused by her husband for fifteen years – but, through her own strength, “overcame everything.” Having buried this experience for many years, twenty-four-year-old Nunes decided it was time to unearth his family’s past; expressing himself through choreography was easier than talking. “Maria” is an amalgam of his experience and of personal experiences contributed by each of his six dancers.

“This is not an easy thing for me, but I thought like I had to – for me, the women, and for my mom,” Nunes said.

 

 

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Costume designer Robert Fletcher has died at age 98.

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Fletcher enjoyed a varied career in which he designed sets and costumes for Lincoln Kirstein's ballet and opera projects, worked with Jerome Robbins on musicals, designed the costumes for the original Broadway productions of the musicals How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Walking Happy and designed the costumes for and played the role of Edgar in Orson Welles's 1956 New York City Center production of Shakespeare's King Lear.........