Category: dance

“In conversations about the future with 14 dance professionals, feelings of anguish, hope, fear and resolve emerged, along with ideas about adaptation and innovation. … Here are some glimpses of what might lie ahead.” – San Francisco Chronicle

“It’s the first time in my position that I feel like I’m truly being heard,” she explains of how she’s using her voice to raise awareness, later adding, “This has been my life’s work as a dancer: speaking about racism in the world, and in ballet, speaking about the lack of diversity. And to have my company, to have the ballet world listening, and to have different panels to speak about this—in a way that I have before, but again, for the first time, people are really seeing it. And I think that’s what’s different about this time, is that I feel like we have true allies and people from other communities and races that we’ve not had before.” – The Root

Sarah Kaufman: “The throughline of WOD is: Show us something we’ve never seen before. As a dance critic, I want to see that, too, whenever I’m in the theater. What new revelation jumps out in a premiere, or in a reinterpretation of a classic work? What fresh response is there to the music, the setting, the story? Part of ‘new’ involves sheer novelty, but part of it is also framing — how the choreographer and the dancer set up a moment for the best impact.” – The Washington Post

The plan just announced by artistic director Christine Cox is for “a new series launching Sept. 10 celebrating the company’s 15th anniversary with world premieres by 15 choreographers. She sees the season in terms of a subscription-based film festival with nine shorts and six features. The shorts will be dance films presented on a new virtual platform hosted on the company’s website called BalletX Beyond. The features are intended to be performed live in the spring or summer, depending on public health concerns, but they, too, may be turned into films, if necessary.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Laszlo Surmeyan danced lead male roles before becoming, in 1986, one of the company’s first principal character artists. This season has marked his farewell to the company after a remarkable 54 years, a record almost as remarkable as that of his wife, Lorna Geddes, who is also leaving this season, after 60 years. – Toronto Star

“Troy Powell, the 51-year-old artistic director of Ailey’s junior touring company and a teacher at The Ailey School in New York City, was dismissed following an investigation commissioned by the school … [which] concluded that Powell had ‘engaged in inappropriate communications with adults enrolled in the School.'” A TikTok video posted on social media last month said “When you wanna be in Ailey 2 … But guys gotta sleep with Troy Powell.” – CNN

The Stuttgart Ballet is performing a program of solos, duos, a trio, and a socially distanced adaptation of Maurice Béjart’s Bolero for 249 people in the theatre and 1,000 cars at a drive-in. The Parc de la Villette in Paris is making its stage available as a large-scale studio/workshop for various companies, with audience members (with limited, timed tickets) able to watch. In Prague last month, they managed to put on a complete contemporary dance festival. Sanjoy Roy reports. – The Guardian

Morgan Bullock’s TikTok videos went viral, and then came the backlash. The dancer diplomatically says, “I think people use the term appropriation without understanding what it means.” Plus, she’s Riverdance approved. – BBC

A new streaming documentary does a lot more than set jazz dance into context – it asks the ballet and dance communities to restructure what they consider “foundational.” – Dance Magazine

“[There’s] a new class of augmented reality (AR) technologies like the Magic Leap, a headset that allows users to superimpose digital media atop their seen reality, innovatively combining recorded dance with real space. Director and founder of the MAP Design Lab Melissa Painter recently collaborated with Pilobolus to produce a bonkers AR choreography called YouDanceWeDance. This project, which began its life on the Magic Leap, allows viewers to use their smartphones to observe (from any angle, and anywhere) Pilobolus dancers moving according to selectable emotional themes.” – Dance Magazine