Monday, March 21

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Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre presents a program featuring female choreographers.

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When Susan Jaffe was an American Ballet Theatre principal, The New York Times described her as “America's quintessential American ballerina.” But as Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s artistic director, Jaffe calls herself “an anomaly.”

 

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A review of the National Ballet of Canada by Denise Sum for danceviewtimes.

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The National Ballet of Canada's winter season started with a farewell run of "A Streetcar Named Desire" for company veteran Sonia Rodriguez. The farewells continued with a mixed program to celebrate Jillian Vanstone's retirement after 22 years. The NBoC acquired Christopher Wheeldon's stunning "After the Rain" for the occasion -- an intimate and emotional choice. Vanstone paired it with Sir Kenneth MacMillan's jaunty "Elite Syncopations" where she could let loose and have fun, surrounded by an ensemble of many of her longtime colleagues. The quadruple bill also includes two new works by emerging talents, choreographic associate Alysa Pires and principal dancer Siphesihle November. 

 

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Interviews with participants in Oakland Ballet's Dancing Moons Festival, which will showcase Asian-American artists.

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Another Dancing Moons contributor, Hong Kong-born choreographer Phil Chan, moved to Berkeley at age 10 and began studying ballet. He won a scholarship to the Alvin Ailey school in New York City, where he now lives.

In 2017 he co-founded Final Bow for Yellowface to confront the racist portrayal of Asian characters in classical ballet.

Chan recalls, “People were coming up to me all the time saying, ‘How do I fix my “Nutcracker?” Can you take a look and see if it’s racist or not?'”

 

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Greensboro Ballet presents "Cinderella."

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The ballet originally had planned to present “Cinderella” in March 2020. But the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live entertainment worldwide.

It postponed the production to fall 2020, then spring 2021, then again for another year.

“We are just overjoyed to finally get to be doing this ballet,” said Jennifer Gentry, executive director of the nonprofit ballet.

 

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A story on the Dance for Ukraine gala by Sophia Alexandra Hall for ClassicFM.

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Ingram was also part of selecting the music for the event, and he “begged Ivan and Alina” to put Triumph of Love from Glazunov’s Raymonda in the programme.

“I love it intensely,” the conductor told Classic FM, “It's one of the most life and humanity-affirming pieces of music ever written, and ....it's by a Russian.

 

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A former Bolshoi dancer and Youth America Grand Prix help get young dance students out of Ukraine.

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She also wrote they should contact YAGP if they needed help finding a ballet school. As the war in Ukraine worsened and waves of refugees flooded out of the country, Larissa says phone calls poured in. Somebody passed along Larissa’s cell number, and she began getting calls from kids in the middle of the night. Dancers, usually between the ages of 12 and 18, were arriving at borders in Poland, Hungary and Romania, sometimes with little more than the clothes on their backs, asking where they should go from there.

 

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An interview with Natalia Osipova.

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But she admits that the Bolshoi was a difficult place to work. It’s a much bigger company than the RB – “with a lot of ambition and ego”, she says. “You need to have a really nice heart. A really nice soul. Not react, you know, when you hear people talking about you badly.”