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Thursday, March 17


dirac

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A look at the challenges facing dance organizations emerging from the pandemic by Sarah L. Kaufman in The Washington Post. Thank you, sandik, for the link!

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But shipping woes are only some of the troubles dance groups face as they get back on the road to perform. Arriving at this point after nearly two years without in-person audiences has been challenging enough, with revenue drying up, salaries reduced or eliminated, all under the persistent health threats unique to dance, with its reliance on bodies moving together in time and space. Training and creative processes have been profoundly strained. Now there are new hurdles. To better understand the pressures facing these artists and how they’ll affect audiences, I spoke with presenters, consultants and company leaders about what’s happening now, and what the longer-term story may be.

 

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A look at Russian and Western ballet politics by Lyndsey Winship in The Guardian.

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A year after the Bolshoi’s UK visit, the British ballerina Beryl Grey became the first western ballerina to guest with the company (in Swan Lake, of course). In her autobiography she recalls a woman sitting at the end of the hotel corridor surveilling everyone’s movements, but also the hugely warm welcome from the company’s star dancers, who joined her for dinner with the British ambassador. She told me in 2018: “It was the first time any of the Bolshoi had been to the British embassy, so that was a good breakthrough. I felt I did some good.” It wasn’t a complete thaw in relations: Grey revisited the theatre the following year and security wouldn’t even let her through the stage door.

 

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A review of the Royal Ballet in "Swan Lake" by Leigh Witchel for dancelog.nyc.

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The intermission after Act 2 went longer than planned, until Artistic Director Kevin O’Hare came out to give a short curtain speech that Osipova felt “quite unwell but wants to try and continue.” And so this act became about the singular event of Osipova in Beast Mode. She did look physically off-form, so all of the exaggerations throughout the ballet could have been an attempt to compensate.

 

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A review of the Australian Ballet in "Anna Karenina" by Gracia Haby for Fjord Review.

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At a train station of the St Petersburg Railway, I arrive. A prologue, in Moscow. In the State Theatre, first viewing. Live streaming on Ballet TV, the second. As the engine smoke clears, I get my bearings. Taking my seat on the platform, in both audiences, I am rendered diminutive. The station is a vast cavern, looming overhead. It is a projection, but it is so cinematically real in its rendering. I might be experiencing the Australian Ballet’s new co-production with the Joffrey Ballet of Yuri Possokhov’s “Anna Karenina,” but I am also visiting a friend: Tolstoy’s timeless literary work. And not unlike Anna herself feeling that “everything was beginning to go double in her soul,” I am in 2022 and I am in the Industrial age Tolstoy so opposed.

 

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Mikhail Baryshnikov is interviewed by John Fraser in The Globe and Mail.

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I know you have started a website called truerussia.org. Who’s involved with you in it and what is the objective?

I was invited by Boris Akunin, a Russian émigré writer based in London, and Sergei Guriev, a Russian émigré economist based in Paris, to band together and create truerussia.org. They were pushed out of Russia for political reasons and have a better understanding than I of Putin’s Russia. Guriev predicted early on that Putin’s aggression would mean millions of Ukrainians would be forced from their homes and from their country. He knew the most valuable thing we could do was to create a secure and reliable portal to raise money to help these refugees and I am honoured to be a part of it. The money goes to the Disasters Emergency Committee, a group of U.K.-based charities co-ordinating emergency relief for victims of natural and humanitarian disasters.......

 

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The National Ballet of Canada rehearses "The Sleeping Beauty."

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As the National Ballet of Canada launches an 11-performance, 50th-anniversary run of its treasured Rudolf Nureyev-choreographed production, two gifted first soloists, Calley Skalnik and Jeannine Haller, are poised to grasp that challenge. For both, Aurora will be their first full-length role.

 

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The Saint Louis Ballet will hold a fundraiser in May.

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The growth of the ballet from a small organization to the professional company is largely owed to its artistic and executive director, Gen Horiuchi, who came to St. Louis in 2000 after a career as a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet and on Broadway.

“I saw the opportunity here and thought it was time to take a leadership role,” Horiuchi says. “Directing and choreographing was something I always wanted to do. I grew up seeing Peter Martins, a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet, later lead the ballet, so that was a career goal for me. That’s why I took that challenge.”

 

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An NPR feature on the Baltimore Ballet Boys.

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“It takes so much courage to throw your ballet slippers into your bag and walk the streets of Baltimore and maintain the necessary toughness and masculinity that you need to make it through. But then also be able to channel that into such a beautiful, beautiful art.” Plus we hear from dancers Brandon Pigott and Sage Chng-Lim (Tsoong-Lim) and filmmaker Gabe Dinsmoor about a collaboration with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra!

 

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Van Cleef & Arpels presents a two-week dance festival.

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The performances are being held at a trio of London’s most venerable cultural institutions: the Royal Opera House, with its rich tradition of classical ballet; Sadler’s Wells, a historic theater in the city’s Islington neighborhood known for commissioning and platforming agenda-setting dance; and the Tate Modern, the modern-art colossus with a singularly progressive approach to programming and collecting dance pieces. But the attitude is clearly one of accessibility, with both Laurent and the house’s president and CEO, Nicolas Bos, emphasizing that the project should “appeal to a large audience.”

 

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A review of San Francisco Ballet by Janice Berman for San Francisco Classical Voice.

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An odd couple proved great company Tuesday night as the San Francisco Ballet’s Program 4, running five times only, opened at the War Memorial Opera House with Martin West conducting. La Sylphide (originating in 1832), one of the oldest ballets extant, was followed by the West Coast premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s The Seasons, which opened at American Ballet Theatre in 2019 as a tribute to the Russian’s first decade as its artist-in-residence.

Review of SFB by Charles Lewis III for 48hills.

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But the indisputable standout is van Patten as the titular Sylph. In fact, the Sylph’s departure at the end of the ballet is almost metaphorical for the dancer herself. Like Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, van Patten is leaving the SF Ballet at the end of this season. This Tomasson-directed piece shows what we’ll miss when the two are gone. Even if she weren’t adorned with wings, van Patten brings a supernatural presence to her role with every en pointe step that glides her across the stage.

 

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