Thursday, October 28

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Pix from American Ballet Theatre's gala party.

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Lemons’s work was echoed on stage (or vice versa) in the IRL adaptation of choreographer Christopher Rudd’s Touché, which stars Calvin Royal III and João Menegussi in a male-male pas de deux rarely seen in the world of classical ballet. The moving piece, which tracks the confusion and second-guesses of desire between two men, garnered a standing ovation. And earlier, the crowd absolutely loved La Follia Variations, the opening ballet from Lauren Lovette, who freshly retired from dancing with the New York City Ballet to focus on choreography. For this, designer Victor Glemaud did the costumes, his mastery of knitwear translating perfectly into body-skimming unitards that followed every inch of the dancer’s incredible bodies. 

 

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An interview with Will Tuckett about his new piece for Ballet Black.

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An exploration of home and belonging, Then Or Now is set to the work of late American activist and poet Adrienne Rich; in particular her 1995 anthology, Dark Fields Of The Republic. Tuckett describes Rich as 'a constant force for good', and worked to ensure her words and his movement complemented rather than distracted from each other. 'Sometimes the rhythm of the poetry is what people are dancing to and then there are points where, if something really important is being said, literally nothing else happens, or the dancers all do something at the same time in order to highlight a word.'

 

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Q&A with Misty Copeland in Vanity Fair.

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When you started this [book], how did you discover that there was so much out there that just isn’t remembered?

Growing up, I actually only had four years of classical ballet training before I moved to New York City and joined American Ballet Theatre. Within that time my teacher did so much to prepare me—that’s not heard of, you know, that’s an extremely concentrated amount of time, and I still wasn’t prepared. I didn’t know all of the French language and terminology for the ballet technique when I became a professional, so I was really learning on the spot. Learning about Black dancers was not at all a part of my journey. It wasn’t until I had spent a couple years in ABT, and as a Black woman and as someone whose mother raised me as a Black girl to be very comfortable in my skin in that way, It was shocking to realize, like, wow, I’m the only Black woman in this company, and that would go on for 10 years. That’s when I kind of started to do my own research and my own digging.