Category: dance

Gia Kourlas: “It didn’t bode well that the first live dance I was going to see since mid-March was one I had seen many times before. Sunshine, a Larry Keigwin war horse set to the Bill Withers classic ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ can give a dancer the opportunity to really feel the music in all the worst ways. It’s treacly stuff. So I’m happy to say that as soon as Melvin Lawovi began to move, my chest tightened; I even sensed — the horror — some tears.” – The New York Times

Ask choreographer Sarah Crowell. The artistic director emeritus of the Destiny Arts Center. “The inquiry requires that we look at all levels of society. We have a particular way of seeing beauty that leaves people out. … In dance, George Balanchine had a great deal to do with creating an aesthetic that was seen as valid and the truth. Very slender, prepubescent, long-legged women. They would have to be white females, but it doesn’t cover all white femaleness. To me, the mind of the artist is like all the minds: colonized to think in a particular way. If what is beautiful is white and thin with long legs and very little breasts, then in the ballet world, how do we break that?” – San Francisco Classical Voice

In a statement that also announced the cancellation of all remaining 2020 performances (including The Nutcracker), the company revealed that Michael Pastreich is departing after 14 months. He’s the third executive director to resign since Julie Kent succeeded Septime Webre as artistic director in 2016. But a pattern of Washington Ballet CEOs quickly coming and going was established quite some time ago, writes Sarah Kaufman. – The Washington Post

“We don’t have to remain in our Brady Bunch squares. It was great to walk by and see the dancers sweating and breathing. We still do that. We are all choreographers now. People are starting to think more spatially.” – Dance Magazine

Kaatsbaan, a Hudson River-side farm that has been offering retreats and workshops for dancers for 30 years, is presenting public performances for the first time this year. (Thanks to COVID, they’ll be outdoors, with a spread-out and masked audience.) Stella Abrera, the recently retired ABT star who’s now Kaatsbaan’s artistic director, is programming the festival with executive director Sonja Kostich and three Black dance artists: Alicia Graf Mack, Lloyd Knight, and Calvin Royal III. – The New York Times

Marina Harss: “When the Compañía Nacional de Danza took the stage at the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza de Granada in southern Spain on Wednesday, it was in many ways like any other dance performance. … [Yet] it was the culmination of months of careful planning, involving the development of protocols, testing and a careful, minutely orchestrated return to the studio.” – The New York Times

The pressure on ballerinas to maintain extremely thin figures is notorious for leading to eating disorders. The Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham, England’s second city, is meeting this problem head-on. (video) – BBC

“Dancers are harming themselves trying to achieve the look. The continued preference for ultrathin bodies seems particularly out of step with current cultural conversations around body positivity and acceptance. What would it take for ballet body standards to change?” After all, writes Garnet Henderson, they’ve changed before. – Dance Magazine

The school’s recently fired artistic director, students say, “abused his position of power, touching them inappropriately or making sexual overtures that include inviting one student to a sex party and sending another an unsolicited photo of his genitals. Three of the students said that after they rebuffed Powell’s advances, they were cut from performances or rejected during auditions, which they believed may have been a form of retaliation.” – CNN

Dancers, unlike baseball players, may not be known for virus-spreading habits like spitting, but their job poses multiple risks. They work in studio spaces with varying degrees of ventilation, they share dressing rooms, they touch, they are prone to heavy breathing. Under what conditions should dance companies consider getting back into the studio during the pandemic? The protocols to be put in place are dizzying. – The New York Times