Category: dance

More than 100 staff and dancers are out sick, but the financial losses were adding up. One dancer: “‘There’s this term, ‘stage therapy’ and that’s what’s happening now,’ she said of the intensive group effort that’s been required to rehearse and perform despite the restrictions. ‘We take energy from [the audience] and we give energy.'” – CBC

“Recently, I attended a panel at a dance studies conference. The buzzwords were so thick, and the presenter breezily buzzed through them at such a rapid pace, that I could not follow her argument. A second panelist presented her ethnographic study of a conservative popular-culture venue with such humor at her subjects’ expense—and commanded such regular laughter from the audience—that it was clear she counted on the near-complete homogeneity of the crowd. Had the sponsoring organization so successfully indoctrinated us with the party line that not a wisp of outrage, excepting my own, was stirred?” – The Massachusetts Review

With the country having at least half a dozen thriving classical dance forms of its own, European-style ballet never caught on in a big way in India. Yet Yana Lewis, a veteran ballerina and teacher from England who settled in India in 1998, founded and runs the Lewis Foundation of Classical Ballet in Bangalore, where she’s training dancers and, crucially, dance instructors who can understand and respect Indian social mores in a way that most foreign ballet masters don’t. – The New Indian Express

Five A-list choreographers were hired to reflect the show’s varied moods and styles: Guillaume Côté, Juliano Nunes, Garrett Smith, Tiler Peck, and Robert Binet. In typical entertainment-world fashion, they had relatively few rehearsals with the cast. – Dance Spirit

Reporter Cory Stieg looks at how various companies are adapting the ballet for this very unusual Christmas, from going online completely (most East Coast troupes) to in-person performances with smaller, socially-distanced casts and audiences (Ballet West in Utah), and why Nutcracker is so important even beyond its status as a revenue generator. – Dance Magazine

Phil Chan, co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, has given advice to a number of companies on how to handle (in live performance) the ethnic-stereotype set pieces in the ballet’s second act. Here he offers three suggestions for providing access to the seasonal favorite for your community when the portrayals in your old production don’t look so good today. – Dance Magazine

Dancers are rarely ever given comprehensive or healthy guidance on how to get into the shape that’s being asked of them—even when the resources are available. – The Observer (UK)

Chloé Lopes Gomes, a Frenchwoman whose father came from Cape Verde, joined the corps of Staatsballett Berlin in 2017 after studying at the Bolshoi and dancing in companies in Nice and Lausanne. She says that she suffered harsh and repeated racial harassment from the ballet mistress in charge of the corps; when she reported the issue to top management, she was told that nothing could be done because that ballet mistress had a lifetime contract. – Pointe Magazine

Brian Seibert looks at two projects, Heidi Latsky Dance’s On Display and Kinetic Light’s Descent, that are indicative of the variety and diversity found in the field of disability dance today. – The New York Times

“Just before midnight every evening in December, some 70 digital billboards encircling the gaudy canyon of Times Square will be co-opted for three minutes by slow-motion images of Black voguers, performing dances of resistance, resilience and liberation. The video installation is the work of the multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome, who has remixed footage from live performances of his 2019 piece Black Magic.” – The New York Times