Friday, May 13

[dirac]

An interview with Adam Sklute.

Quote

More consequentially, however, Sklute has worked to bring the company up to speed on racial diversity. Of Ballet West’s 52 dancers, seven are Black, and three of its eight principal dancers are people of color, including Herrera. The troupe has finally ditched skin lighteners used to “whiten” dancers holding classical roles in “Swan Lake” or “Giselle,” and when the company unveils new creations during its Choreographic Fest V in May, spectators may notice that Black performers wear shoes matching the hue of their skin. In many ways, Sklute was the right man to “bring Ballet West into the 21st century,” as he puts it. But how he got here was an unlikely journey. 

 

[dirac]

 A review of Dutch National Ballet by Ilona Landgraf in her blog, "Landgraf on Dance."

Quote

Dutch National Ballet promised a new take on Petipa’s 1898 classic – the last major work of his career – and the associate artistic director Rachel Beaujean, who was in charge of the production, gave Lidiya Pashkova’s original libretto a sharp twist in abandoning some outdated clichés: Beaujean’s Raymonda doesn’t marry the honorable Jean de Brienne (a crusader turned prince), but instead marries Abd al-Rahman, the passionate and no-less-noble sheikh of Córdoba. This shatters the stereotype of the righteous, white Westerner saving a virtuous girl from a wantonly cruel Easterner. Gone, too, is the notion that a woman must passively acquiesce to her fate. Raymonda no longer obediently follows the decision of others. Though at first hesitant to embrace Al-Rahman’s sensuality, she allows herself to feel her own feelings alongside him. She decides to whom her heart belongs. This renders obsolete the role of the White Lady – a protective guide invented by Pashkova who appears in Raymonda’s dream. Fearlessly, Amsterdam’s Raymonda steps between the two suitors as they fiercely cross their swords in battle for her hand, trying to calm their boiling fury. That the outraged de Brienne (our supposed “good guy”) has initiated the fight buries yet another cliché.

 

[dirac]

Alastair Macaulay writes on women assuming more leadership roles at ballet companies, and other topics.

Quote

It’s remarkable how skilfully McKenzie’s A.B.T. has mastered all these different kinds of classical style; and yet the overall effect has been anonymous. I don’t underestimate the really delectable subtleties of stylistic detail shown by the Ballet Theatre female corps in The Dream and Cinderella, by principals and soloists in Ratmansky’s Whipped Cream, by the whole company in the Ratmansky-Petipa Sleeping Beauty. But there’s no recognisable style that binds one ballet to the next. Ashton, acknowledging after Balanchine’s death that New York City Ballet had danced all its repertory in one overall style, exclaimed “That’s how it’s got to be! When I was in charge of the Royal Ballet, I wasn’t just looking after my own ballets. I took all those women down the ramp in La Bayadère; I was discussing every new ballet with each choreographer.” I see no such stylistic coherence in Ballet Theatre.