Friday, December 22

[dirac]

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

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After half a century without a family-friendly “Nutcracker”, the Stuttgart Ballet decided last year to fill the vacuum with a new version by Edward Clug. Clug, artistic director of the Maribor Ballet/Slovenia, had already contributed several short pieces to the Stuttgart company’s repertory, but “The Nutcracker” was his first full-evening story ballet for them. Stuttgart Ballet’s artistic director, Tamas Detrich, took the set and costume design choices into his own hands and commissioned a longstanding collaborator of the troupe – Jürgen Rose – to team up with Clug.

 

[dirac]

Alexandra Hutchinson and India Bradley are interviewed about dancing Dewdrop by Gia Kourlas in  The New York Times.

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.....But Bradley wasn’t the only Black dancer to get a shot at Dewdrop. As part of City Ballet’s 75th anniversary season, Alexandra Hutchinson, a member of Dance Theater of Harlem, performed the role twice as a guest artist earlier this month.

While Bradley was coached by the repertory director Christine Redpath, Hutchinson, 28, learned the role from Kyra Nichols, a former City Ballet principal who staged the Balanchine ballet “Pas de Dix” at Dance Theater this summer.

“I feel like she’s the golden standard,” Hutchinson said of Nichols.

 

[dirac]

Retired dancer Martin Howland gives free lessons to poor children.

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The project was started by Howland, who trained at the Royal Ballet, in partnership with Kay Reardon, a former professional dancer who trained at Laine Theatre Arts, and Tim Jarrett, a sports scientist, strength and conditioning lecturer at the University of Leeds.

It is the second programme run by the trio’s nonprofit organisation, Project Resurgence, which aims to revolutionise ballet by making it more accessible and inclusive, as well as challenging its reputation of being an elitist art form.